Keogh explained his project. They were to return to Coralio, where White was to pose as a distinguished American portrait painter who was touring in the tropics as a relaxation from his arduous and remunerative professional labors. It was not an unreasonable hope, even to those who trod in the beaten paths of business, that an artist with so much prestige might secure a commission to perpetuate upon canvas the lineaments of the president, and secure a share of the ~pesos~ that were raining upon the caterers to his weaknesses.
Keogh had set his price at ten thousand dollars. Artists had been paid more for portraits. He and White were to share the expenses of the trip, and divide the possible profits. Thus he laid the scheme before White, whom he had known in the West before one declared for Art and the other became a Bedouin.
Before long the two machinators abandoned the rigor of the bare studio for a snug corner of a cafe. There they sat far into the night, with old envelopes and Keogh"s stub of blue pencil between them.
At twelve o"clock White doubled up in his chair, with his chin on his fist, and shut his eyes at the unbeautiful wall-paper.
"I"ll go you, Billy," he said, in the quiet tones of decision. "I"ve got two or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I"ll take the chance with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in Paris and one in Italy. I"ll begin to pack tomorrow."
"You"ll begin in ten minutes," said Keogh. "It"s to-morrow now. The ~Karlsefin~ starts back at four P.M. Come on to your painting shop, and I"ll help you."
For five months in the year Coralio is the Newport of Anchuria. Then only does the town possess life. From November to March it is practically the seat of government. The president with his official family sojourns there; and society follows him. The pleasure-loving people make the season one long holiday of amus.e.m.e.nt and rejoicing. ~Fiestas~, b.a.l.l.s, games, sea bathing, processions and small theatres contribute to their enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the capital plays in the little plaza every evening, while the fourteen carriages and vehicles in the town circle in funereal but complacent procession. Indians from the interior mountains, looking like pre-historic stone idols, come down to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged out with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, underfoot, among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the presidential party, at the opening of the season, attended with pomp, show and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm and delight.
When Keogh and White reached their destination, on the return trip of the ~Karlsefin~, the gay winter season was well begun. As they stepped upon the beach they could hear the band playing in the plaza. The village maidens, with fireflies already fixed in their dark locks, were gliding, barefoot and coy-eyed, along the paths. Dandies in white linen, swinging their canes, were beginning their seductive strolls. The air was full of human essence, of artificial enticement, of coquetry, indolence, pleasure--the man-made sense of existence.
The first two or three days after their arrival were spent in preliminaries. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing him to the little circle of English-speaking residents and pulling whatever wires he could to effect the spreading of White"s fame as a painter. And then Keogh planned a more spectacular demonstration of the idea he wished to keep before the public.
He and White engaged rooms in the Hotel de los Extranjeros. The two were clad in new suits of immaculate duck, with American straw hats, and carried canes of remarkable uniqueness and inutility. Few caballeros in Coralio--even the gorgeously uniformed officers of the Anchurian army--were as conspicuous for ease and elegance of demeanor as Keogh and his friend, the great American painter, Senor White.
White set up his easel on the beach and made striking sketches of the mountain and sea views. The native population formed at his rear in a vast, chattering semicircle to watch his work. Keogh, with his care for details, had arranged for himself a pose which he carried out with fidelity. His ro1e was that of friend to the great artist, a man of affairs and leisure. The visible emblem of his position was a pocket camera.
"For branding the man who owns it," said he, "a genteel dilettante with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain"t in it with a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making snap-shots, and you know right away he reads up well in "Bradstreet." You notice these old millionaire boys--soon as they get through taking everything else in sight they go to taking photographs. People are more impressed by a kodak than they are by a t.i.tle or a four-karat scarf-pin." So Keogh strolled blandly about Coralio, snapping the scenery and the shrinking senoritas, while White posed conspicuously in the higher regions of art.
Two weeks after their arrival, the scheme began to bear fruit. An aide-de-camp of the president drove to the hotel in a dashing victoria. The president desired that Senor White come to the Casa Morena for an informal interview.
Keogh gripped his pipe tightly between his teeth. "Not a cent less than ten thousand," he said to the artist--"remember the price. And in gold or its equivalent--don"t let him stick you with this bargain-counter stuff they call money here."
"Perhaps it isn"t that he wants," said White.
"Get out!" said Keogh, with splendid confidence. "I know what he wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American painter and filibuster now sojourning in his down-trodden country. Off you go."
The victoria sped away with the artist. Keogh walked up and down, puffing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and waited. In an hour the victoria swept again to the door of the hotel, deposited White, and vanished. The artist dashed up the stairs, three at a step. Keogh stopped smoking, and became a silent interrogation point.
"Landed," exclaimed White, with his boyish face flushed with elation. "Billy, you are a wonder. He wants a picture. I"ll tell you all about it. By Heavens! that dictator chap is a corker! He"s a dictator clear down to his finger-ends. He"s a kind of combination of Julius Caesar, Lucifer and Chauncey Depew done in sepia. Polite and grim--that"s his way. The room I saw him in was about ten acres big, and looked like a Mississippi steamboat with its gilding and mirrors and white paint. He talks English better than I can ever hope to. The matter of the price came up. I mentioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the guard and have me taken out and shot. He didn"t move an eyelash. He just waved one of his chestnut hands in a careless way, and said, "Whatever you say." I am to go back tomorrow and discuss with him the details of the picture."
Keogh hung his head. Self-abas.e.m.e.nt was easy to read in his downcast countenance.
"I"m failing, Carry," he said, sorrowfully. "I"m not fit to handle these man"s-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought I had sized up that brown man"s limit to within two cents. He"d have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say--Carry-- you"ll see old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot asylum, won"t you, if he makes a break like that again?"
The Casa Morena, although only one story in height, was a building of brown stone, luxurious as a palace in its interior. It stood on a low hill in a walled garden of splendid tropical flora at the upper edge of Coralio. The next day the president"s carriage came again for the artist. Keogh went out for a walk along the beach, where he and his "picture box" were now familiar sights. When he returned to the hotel White was sitting in a steamer-chair on the balcony.
"Well," said Keogh, "did you and His Nibs decide on the kind of a chromo he wants?"
White got up and walked back and forth on the balcony a few times. Then he stopped, and laughed strangely. His face was flushed, and his eyes were bright with a kind of angry amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Look here, Billy," he said, somewhat roughly, "when you first came to me in my studio and mentioned a picture, I thought you wanted a Smashed Oats or a Hair Tonic poster painted on a range of mountains or the side of a continent. Well, either of those jobs would have been Art in its highest form compared to the one you"ve steered me against. I can"t paint that picture, Billy. You"ve got to let me out. Let me try to tell you what that barbarian wants. He had it all planned out and even a sketch made of his idea. The old boy doesn"t draw badly at all. But, ye G.o.ddesses of Art! listen to the monstrosity he expects me to paint. He wants himself in the center of the canvas, of course. He is to be painted as Jupiter sitting on Olympus, with the clouds at his feet. At one side of him stands George Washington, in full regimentals, with his hand on the president"s shoulder. An angel with outstretched wings hovers overhead, and is placing a laurel wreath on the president"s head, crowning him--Queen of the May, I suppose. In the background is to be cannon, more angels and soldiers. The man who would paint that picture would have to have the soul of a dog, and would deserve to go down into oblivion without even a tin can tied to his tail to sound his memory."
Little beads of moisture crept out all over Billy Keogh"s brow. The stub of his blue pencil had not figured out a contingency like this. The machinery of his plan had run with flattering smoothness until now. He dragged another chair upon the balcony, and got White back to his seat. He lit his pipe with apparent calm.
"Now, sonny," he said, with gentle grimness, "you and me will have an Art to Art talk. You"ve got your art and I"ve got mine. Yours is the real Pierian stuff that turns up its nose at bock-beer signs and oleographs of the Old Mill. Mine"s the art of Business. This was my scheme, and it worked out like two-and-two. Paint that president man as Old King Cole, or Venus, or a landscape, or a fresco, or a bunch of lilies, or anything he thinks he looks like. But get the paint on the canvas and collect the spoils. You wouldn"t throw me down, Carry, at this stage of the game. Think of that ten thousand."
"I can"t help thinking of it," said White, "and that"s what hurts. I"m tempted to throw every ideal I ever had down in the mire, and steep my soul in infamy by painting that picture. That five thousand meant three years of foreign study to me, and I"d almost sell my soul for that. "
"Now it ain"t as bad as that," said Keogh, soothingly. "It"s a business proposition. It"s so much paint and time against money. I don"t fall in with your idea that that picture would so everlastingly jolt the art side of the question. George Washington was all right, you know, and n.o.body could say a word against the angel. I don"t think so bad of that group. If you was to give Jupiter a pair of epaulets and a sword, and kind of work the clouds around to look like a blackberry patch, it wouldn"t make such a bad battle scene. Why, if we hadn"t already settled on the price, he ought to pay an extra thousand for Washington, and the angel ought to raise it five hundred."
"You don"t understand, Billy," said White, with an uneasy laugh. "Some of us fellows who try to paint have big notions about Art. I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet. And I wanted "em to go away and ask, "What else has he done?" And I didn"t want "em to find a thing; not a portrait nor a magazine cover nor an ill.u.s.tration nor a drawing of a girl--nothing but the picture. That"s why I"ve lived on fried sausages, and tried to keep true to myself. I persuaded myself to do this portrait for the chance it might give me to study abroad. But this howling, screaming caricature! Good Lord! can"t you see how it is?"
"Sure," said Keogh, as tenderly as he would have spoken to a child, and he laid a long forefinger on White"s knee. "I see. It"s bad to have your art all slugged up like that. I know. You wanted to paint a big thing like the panorama of the battle of Gettysburg. But let me kalsomine you a little mental sketch to consider. Up to date we"re out $385.50 on this scheme. Our capital took every cent both of us could raise. We"ve got about enough left to get back to New York on. I need my share of that ten thousand. I want to work a copper deal in Idaho, and make a hundred thousand. That"s the business end of the thing. Come down off your art perch, Carry, and let"s land that hatful of dollars."
"Billy," said White, with an effort, "I"ll try. I won"t say I"ll do it, but I"ll try. I"ll go at it, and put it through if I can."
"That"s business," said Keogh, heartily. "Good boy! Now, here"s another thing--rush that picture--crowd it through as quick as you can. Get a couple of boys to help you mix the paint if necessary. I"ve picked up some pointers around town. The people here are beginning to get sick of Mr. President. They say he"s been too free with concessions; and they accuse him of trying to make a d.i.c.ker with England to sell out the country. We want that picture done and paid for before there"s any row."
In the great patio of Casa Morena, the president caused to be stretched a huge canvas. Under this White set up his temporary studio. For two hours each day the great man sat to him.
White worked faithfully. But, as the work progressed, he had seasons of bitter scorn, of infinite self-contempt, of sullen gloom and sardonic gaiety. Keogh, with the patience of a great general, soothed, coaxed, argued--kept him at the picture.
At the end of a month White announced that the picture was completed-- Jupiter, Washington, angels, clouds, cannon and all. His face was pale and his mouth drawn straight when he told Keogh. He said the president was much pleased with it. It was to be hung in the National Gallery of Statesmen and Heroes. The artist had been requested to return to Casa Morena on the following day to receive payment. At the appointed time he left the hotel, silent under his friend"s joyful talk of their success.
An hour later he walked into the room where Keogh was waiting, threw his hat on the floor, and sat upon the table.
"Billy," he said, in strained and laboring tones, "I"ve a little money out West in a small business that my brother is running. It"s what I"ve been living on while I"ve been studying art. I"ll draw out my share and pay you back what you"ve lost on this scheme."
"Lost!" exclaimed Keogh, jumping up. "Didn"t you get paid for the picture?"
"Yes, I got paid," said White. "But just now there isn"t any picture, and there isn"t any pay. If you care to hear about it, here are the edifying details. The president and I were looking at the painting. His secretary brought a bank draft on New York for ten thousand dollars and handed it to me. The moment I touched it I went wild. I tore it into little pieces and threw them on the floor. A workman was repainting the pillars inside the ~patio~. A bucket of his paint happened to be convenient. I picked up his brush and slapped a quart of blue paint all over that ten-thousand-dollar nightmare. I bowed, and walked out. The president didn"t move or speak. That was one time he was taken by surprise. It"s tough on you, Billy, but I couldn"t help it."
There seemed to be excitement in Coralio. Outside there was a confused, rising murmur pierced by high-pitched cries. "~Bajo el traidor--Muerte el traidor!~" were the words they seemed to form.
"Listen to that!" exclaimed White, bitterly; "I know that much Spanish. They"re shouting, "Down with the traitor!" I heard them before. I felt that they meant me. I was a traitor to Art. The picture had to go."
""Down with the blank fool" would have suited your case better," said Keogh, with fiery emphasis. "You tear up ten thousand dollars like an old rag because the way you"ve spread on five dollars" worth of paint hurts your conscience. Next time I pick a side-partner in a scheme the man has got to go before a notary and swear he never even heard the word "ideal" mentioned."
Keogh strode from the room, white-hot. White paid little attention to his resentment. The scorn of Billy Keogh seemed a trifling thing beside the greater self-scorn he had escaped.
In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause of this demonstration of displeasure was,the presence in the town of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his government come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the custom- houses turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring people had determined to make their protest felt.
On that night, in Coralio and in other towns, their ire found vent. Veiling mobs, mercurial but dangerous, roamed the streets. They overthrew the great bronze statue of the president that stood in the center of the plaza, and hacked it to shapeless pieces. They tore from public buildings the tablets set there proclaiming the glory of the "Ill.u.s.trious Liberator." His pictures in the government offices were demolished. The mobs even attacked the Casa Morena, but were driven away by the military, which remained faithful to the executive. All the night terror reigned.
The greatness of Losada was shown by the fact that by noon the next day order was restored and he was still absolute. He issued proclamations denying positively that any negotiation of any kind had been entered into with England. Sir Stafford Vaughn, the pink-cheeked Englishman, also declared in placards and in public print that his presence there had no international significance. He was a traveller without guile. In fact (so he stated), he had not even spoken with the president or been in his presence since his arrival.
During this disturbance, White was preparing for his homeward voyage in the steamship that was to sail within two or three days. About noon, Keogh, the restless, took his camera out with the hope of speeding the lagging hours. The town was now as quiet as if peace had never departed from her perch on the red-tiled roofs.
About the middle of the afternoon, Keogh hurried back to the hotel with something decidedly special in his air. He retired to the little room where he developed his pictures.
Later on he came out to White on the balcony, with a luminous, grim predatory smile on his face.
"Do you know what that is?" he asked, holding up a 4 x 5 photograph mounted on cardboard.
"Snap-shot of a senorita sitting in the sand--alliteration unintentional," guessed White, lazily.
VVVV "Wrong," saidKeogh with shining eyes. "It"s a slung-shot. It"s a can of dynamite. It"s a gold mine. It"s a sight-draft on your president man for twenty thousand dollars--yes, sir--twenty thousand this time, and no spoiling the picture. No ethics of art in the way. Art! You with your smelly little tubes! I"ve got you skinned to death with a kodak. Take a look at that."
White took the picture in his hand, and gave a long whistle.
"Jove!" he exclaimed, "but wouldn"t that stir up a row in town if you let it be seen. How in the world did you get it, Billy?"
"You know that high wall around the president man"s back garden? I was up there trying to get a bird"s eye of the town. I happened to notice a c.h.i.n.k in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster had slid out. Thinks I, I"ll take a peep through to see how Mr. President"s cabbages are growing. The first thing I saw was him and this Sir Englishman sitting at a little table about twenty feet away. They had the table all spread over with doc.u.ments, and they were hobn.o.bbing over them as thick as two pirates. "Twas a nice corner of the garden, all private and shady with palms and orange trees, and they had a pail of champagne set by handy in the gra.s.s. I knew then was the time for me to make my big hit in Art. So I raised the machine up to the crack, and pressed the b.u.t.ton. Just as I did so them old boys shook hands on the deal--you see they took that way in the picture."
Keogh put on his coat and hat.
"What are you going to do with it?" asked White.
"Me," said Keogh in a hurt tone, "why, I"m going to tie a pink ribbon to it and hang it on the what-not, of course. I"m surprised at you. But while I"m out you just try to figure out what ginger-cake potentate would be most likely to want to buy this work of art for his private collection--just to keep it out of circulation."
The sunset was reddening the tops of the coconut palms when Billy Keogh came back from Casa Morena. He nodded to the artist"s questioning gaze; and lay down on a cot with his hands under the back of his head.
"I saw him. He paid the money like a little man. They didn"t want to let me in at first. I told "em it was important. Yes, that president man is on the plenty-able list. He"s got a beautiful business system about the way he uses his brains. All I had to do was to hold up the photograph so he could see it, and name the price. He just smiled, and walked over to a safe and got the cash. Twenty one-thousand-dollar brand-new United States Treasury notes he laid on the table, like I"d pay out a dollar and a quarter. Fine notes, too --they crackled with a sound like burning the brush off a ten-acre lot."
"Let"s try the feel of one," said White, curiously. "I never saw a thousand-dollar bill." Keogh did not immediately respond.
"Carry," he said, in an absent-minded way, "you think a heap of your art, don"t you?
"More," said White, frankly, "than has been for the financial good of my self and my friends."
"I thought you were a fool the other day," went on Keogh, quietly, "and I"m not sure now that you wasn"t. But if you was, so am I. I"ve been in some funny deals, Carry, but I"ve always managed to scramble fair, and match my brains and capital against the other fellow"s. But when it comes to--well, when you"ve got the other fellow cinched, and the screws on him, and he"s got to put up--why, it don"t strike me as being a man"s game. They"ve got a name for it, you know; it"s-- confound you, don"t you understand. A fellow feels--it"s some thing like that blamed art of yours--he--well, I tore that photograph up and laid the pieces on that stack of money and shoved the whole business back across the table. "Excuse me, Mr. Losada," I said, "but I guess I"ve made a mistake in the price. You get the photo for nothing. Now, Carry, you get out the pencil, and we"ll do some more figuring. I"d like to save enough out of our capital for you to have some fried sausages in your joint when you get back to New York.
XV.
d.i.c.key.
There is little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and a cigarette.
After the ineffectual revolt against the administration of President Losada, the country settled again into quiet toleration of the abuses with which he had been charged. In Coralio old political enemies went arm-in-arm, lightly eschewing for the time all differences of opinion.
The failure of the art expedition did not stretch the cat-footed Keogh upon his back. The ups and downs of Fortune made smooth travelling for his nimble steps. His blue pencil stub was at work again before the smoke of the steamer on which White sailed had cleared away from the horizon. He had but to speak a word to Geddie to find his credit negotiable for whatever goods he wanted from the store of Brannigan & Company. On the same day on which White arrived in New York Keogh, at the rear of a train of five pack mules loaded with hardware and cutlery, set his face toward the grim, interior mountains. There the Indian tribes wash gold dust from the auriferous streams; and when a market is brought to them trading is brisk and ~muy bueno~ in the Cordilleras.
In Coralio Time folded his wings and paced wearily along his drowsy path. They who had most cheered the torpid hours were gone. Clancy had sailed on a Spanish barque for Colon, contemplating a cut across the isthmus and then a further voyage to end at Callao, where the fighting was said to be on. Geddie, whose quiet and genial nature had once served to mitigate the frequent dull reaction of lotus eating, was now a home-man, happy with his bright orchid, Paula, and never even dreaming of or regretting the unsolved, sealed and monogramed Bottle whose contents, now inconsiderable, were held safely in the keeping of the sea.
Well may the Walrus, most discerning and eclectic of beasts, place sealing-wax midway on his program of topics that fall pertinent and diverting upon the ear. Atwood was gone--he of the hospitable back porch and ingenuous cunning. Doctor Gregg, with his trepanning story smoldering within him, was a whiskered volcano, always showing signs of imminent eruption, and was not to be considered in the ranks of those who might contribute to the amelioration of ennui. The new consul"s note chimed with the sad sea waves and the violent tropical greens--he had not a bar of Scheherezade or of the Round Table in his lute. Goodwin was employed with large projects: what time he was loosed from them found him at his home, where he loved to be. Therefore it will be seen that there was a dearth of fellowship and entertainment among the foreign contingent of Coralio.
And then d.i.c.ky Maloney dropped down from the clouds upon the town, and amused it.
n.o.body knew where d.i.c.ky Maloney hailed from or how he reached Coralio. He appeared there one day; and that was all. He afterward said that he came on the fruit steamer ~Thor~, but an inspection of the ~Thor"s~ pa.s.senger list of that date was found to be Maloneyless. Curiosity, however, soon perished; and d.i.c.ky took his place among the odd fish cast up by the Caribbean.
He was an active, devil-may-care, rollicking fellow with an engaging gray eye, the most irresistible grin, a rather dark or much sunburned complexion, and a head of the fieriest red hair ever seen in that country. Speaking the Spanish language as well as he spoke English, and seeming always to have plenty of silver in his pockets, it was not long before he was a welcome companion whithersoever he went. He had an extreme fondness for ~vino blanco~, and gained the reputation of being able to drink more of it than any three men in town. Everybody called him "d.i.c.ky"; everybody cheered up at the sight of him-- especially the natives, to whom his marvellous red hair and his free- and-easy style were a constant delight and envy. Wherever you went in the town you would soon see d.i.c.ky or hear his genial laugh, and find around him a group of admirers who appreciated him both for his good nature and the white wine he was always so ready to buy.
A considerable amount of speculation was had concerning the object of his sojourn there, until one day he silenced this by opening a small shop for the sale of tobacco, ~dulces~ and the handiwork of the interior Indians--fibre-and-silk-woven goods, deerskin ~zapatos~ and basketwork of tule reeds. Even then he did not change his habits; for he was drinking and playing cards half the day and night with the ~comandante~, the collector of customs, the ~jefe politico~ and other gay dogs among the native officials.
One day d.i.c.ky saw Pasa, the daughter of Madama Ortiz, sitting in the side-door of the Hotel de los Extranjeros. He stopped in his tracks, still, for the first time in Coralio; and then he sped, swift as a deer, to find Vasquez, a gilded native youth, to present him.
The young men had named Pasa ~La Sant.i.ta Naranjadita~." ~Naranjadita~ is a Spanish word for a certain color that you must go to more trouble to describe in English. By saying "The little saint, tinted the most beautiful-delicate-slightly-orange-golden," you will approximate the description of Madama Ortiz"s daughter.
La Madama Ortiz sold rum in addition to other liquors. Now, you must know that the rum expiates whatever opprobrium attends upon the other commodities. For rum-making, mind you, is a government monopoly; and to keep a government dispensary a.s.sures respectability if not preeminence. Moreover, the saddest of precisians could find no fault with the conduct of the shop. Customers drank there in the lowest of spirits and fearsomely, as in the shadow of the dead for Madama"s ancient and vaunted lineage counteracted even the rum"s behest to be merry. For, was she not of the ~Iglesias~, who landed with Pizarro? And had not her deceased husband been ~comisionado de caminos y puentes~ for the district?
In the evenings Pasa sat by the window in the room next to the one where they drank, and strummed dreamily upon her guitar. And then, by twos and threes, would come visiting young caballeros and occupy the prim line of chairs set against the wall of this room. They were there to besiege the heart of ~La Sant.i.ta~." Their method (which is not proof against intelligent compet.i.tion) consisted of expanding the chest, looking valorous, and consuming a gross or two of cigarettes. Even saints delicately oranged prefer to be wooed differently.
Dona Pasa would tide over the vast chasms of nicotinized silence with music from her guitar, while she wondered if the romances she had read about gallant and more--more contiguous cavaliers were all lies. At somewhat regular intervals Madama would glide in from the dispensary with a sort of drought-suggesting gleam in her eye, and there would be a rustling of stiffly starched white trousers as one of the caballeros would propose an adjournment to the bar.
That d.i.c.ky Maloney would, sooner or later, explore this field was a thing to be foreseen. There were few doors in Coralio into which his red head had not been poked.
In an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time after his first sight of her he was there, seated close beside her rocking chair. There was no back-against-the-wall poses in d.i.c.ky"s theory of wooing. His plan of subjection was an attack at close range. To carry the fortress with one concentrated, ardent, eloquent, irresistible ~escalade~-- that was d.i.c.ky"s way.
Pasa was descended from the proudest Spanish families in the country. Moreover, she had had unusual advantages. Two years in a New Orleans school had elevated her ambitions and fitted her for a fate above the ordinary maidens of her native land. And yet here she succ.u.mbed to the first red-haired scamp with a glib tongue and a charming smile that came along and courted her properly.
Very soon d.i.c.ky took her to the little church on the corner of the plaza, and "Mrs. Maloney" was added to her string of distinguished names.
And it was her fate to sit, with her patient, saintly eyes and figure like a bisque Psyche, behind the sequestered counter of the little shop, while d.i.c.ky drank and philandered with is frivolous acquaintances.
The women, with their naturally fine instinct, saw a chance for vivisection, and delicately taunted her with his habits. She turned upon them in a beautiful, steady blaze of sorrowful contempt.
"You meat-cows," she said, in her level, crystal-clear tones; "you know nothing of a man. Your men are ~maromeros~. They are fit only to roll cigarettes in the shade until the sun strikes and shrivels them up. They drone in your hammocks and you comb their hair and feed them with fresh fruit. My man is of no such blood. Let him drink of the wine. When he has taken sufficient of it to drown one of your ~flaccitos~ he will come home to me more of a man than one thousand of your ~pobrecitos~. My hair he smooths and braids; to me he sings; he himself removes my zapatos, and there, there, upon each instep leaves a kiss. He holds--Oh, you will never understand! Blind ones who have never known a ~man~."
Sometimes mysterious things happened at night about d.i.c.ky"s shop. While the front of it was dark, in the little room back of it d.i.c.ky and a few of his friends would sit about a table carrying on some kind of very quiet ~negocios~ until quite late. Finally he would let them out the front door very carefully, and go upstairs to his little saint. These visitors were generally conspirator-like men with dark clothes and hats. Of course, these dark things were noticed after a while, and talked about.
d.i.c.ky seemed to care nothing at all for the society of the alien residents of the town. He avoided Goodwin, and his skilful escape from the trepanning story of Doctor Gregg is still referred to, in Coralio, as a masterpiece of lightning diplomacy.
Many letters arrived, addressed to "Mr. d.i.c.ky Maloney," or "Senor d.i.c.kee Maloney," to the considerable pride of Pasa. That so many people should desire to write to him only confirmed her own suspicion that the light from his red head shone around the world. As to their contents she never felt curiosity. There was a wife to you!
The one mistake d.i.c.ky made in Coralio was to run out of money at the wrong time. Where his money came from was a puzzle, for the sales of his shop were next to nothing, but that source failed, and at a peculiarly unfortunate time. It was when the ~comandante~, Don Senor el Coronel Encarnacion Rios, looked upon the little saint seated in the shop and felt his heart go pitapat.
The ~comandante~, who was versed in all the intricate art of gallantry, first delicately hinted at his sentiments by donning his dress uniform and strutting up and down fiercely before her window. Pasa, glancing demurely with her saintly eyes, instantly perceived his resemblance to her parrot, Chichi, and was diverted to the extent of smile. The ~comandante~ saw the smile, which was not intended for him. Convinced of an impression made, he entered the shop, confidently, and advanced to open compliment. Pasa froze; he pranced; she flamed royally; he was charmed to injudicious persistence; she commanded him to leave the shop; he tried to capture her hand and-- d.i.c.ky entered, smiling broadly, full of white wine and the devil.
He spent five minutes in punishing the comandante scientifically and carefully, so that the pain might be prolonged as far as possible. At the end of that time he pitched the rash wooer out the door upon the stones of the street, senseless.
A barefooted policeman who had been watching the affair from across the street blew a whistle. A squad of four soldiers came running from the cuartel around the corner. When they saw that the offender was d.i.c.ky, they stopped, and blew more whistles, which brought out reinforcements of eight. Deeming the odds against them sufficiently reduced, the military advanced upon the disturber.
d.i.c.ky, being thoroughly imbued with the martial spirit, stooped and drew the ~comandante"s~ sword, which was girded about him, and charged his foe. He chased the standing army four squares, playfully prodding its squealing rear and hacking at its ginger-colored heels.
But he was not so successful with the civic authorities. Six muscular, nimble policemen overpowered him and conveyed him, triumphantly but warily, to jail. "~El Diablo Colorado~" they dubbed him, and derided the military for its defeat.