Fate Knocks at the Door. Will Levington Comfort

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СКАЧАТЬ own workings in anxiety. Bedient's uplifted hand caught the other's eye as the launch neared. The old adventurer needed a second or two to take in the tall figure and the changed countenance—then a look of gladness, full, deep and tender with embarrassment, crowned the years and the long journey.

      Bedient had to remember hard, after dozens of fluent and delightful letters, that he must encounter the old bashfulness again. … Plainly the Captain showed the years. There was the dark dry look of some inner consuming, and the trembling mouth was lined and assertive where formerly it was unnoticed in the general cheer. There was a break in rotundity. Perhaps this, more than anything else, put a strange hush upon the meeting. Bedient was glad he had not delayed longer; and he saw he must break through the embarrassment, as the boy and the cook of years ago would not have thought of doing. The old perfume sought his nostrils delicately with a score of memories.

      The Captain seemed to have an absurd number of natives at his disposal. Bedient's small pieces of baggage were prodigiously handled. A carriage was provided, and the two drove up the main thoroughfare, Calle Real. The little city was appointed and its streets named by the Spanish. Parts of it were very old, and Bedient liked the setting, which was new to him—the native courtesy and the mellowness of architecture which that old race of conquerors has left in so many isles of the Western sea.

      At the head of the rising highway shone a gilded dome, a sort of crown for the city. Bedient had seen it shining from the harbor, and supposed it to be the capitol. The building stood upon an eminence like a temple. Calle Real parted to the right and left at its gates. Their carriage passed to the right, and within the walls were groves of palms, gardens of rose, rhododendron, jasmine, flames of poinsettia, and a suggestion of mystic glooms where orchids breathed—fruit, fragrance, fountains.

      "The Capitol?" laughed the Captain. "No, my boy, those little rain-rotted, stone buildings near the water-front are the government property. However, you never can tell about Equatoria. There are folks who believe that this stone palace of Señor Rey is fated to become the Capitol. It might happen in two ways. Señor Rey might overturn the government and move headquarters to his own house. You see, he loves fine things too well to reside back yonder. Or, the government overturning Celestino Rey—would ultimately move up here on the hill."

      Bedient laughed softly. It was all delightfully young to him. "Then

       Señor Rey aspires?"

      "That's the idea—only we put it 'conspires' down here. … It is really a remarkable institution—this of Señor Rey's," Carreras went on. He forgot himself in a narrative. "Now, if you were in New York and had a hundred thousand dollars of another man's money, and wanted to relax—you would come here to Equatoria, and put up with Celestino Rey. To all appearances, The Pleiad is a hotel, but in reality it's just a club for those who have taken the short cut to fortune—the direct and amiable way of loot. There's so much red tape in Equatoria that a New York warrant for arrest would be about as compelling in our city as a comic valentine.

      "So you see, Andrew, those who used to fly to Mexico now come here. This is the most interesting colony of crime-cultured gentlemen in the world—ex-cashiers, penmen, promoters and gamblers, all move in those great halls and gardens. There are big games. Señor Rey is an artist in many ways, not only as a master of gambling chances. His palace is filled with art treasures from all lands. He was a pirate in these waters—yes, within your years. I heard of him in Asia as the most murderous pirate the Caribbean had ever known—and this was the Spanish Main. Of course, stories build about a picturesque figure. The Señor must be seventy years old now, but a man of mystery, fabulously rich. … Just a little while ago, he brought over a fresh bride from South America. They say she's a thriller to look at. The Spaniard calls her his 'Glow-worm'——"

      "Truly a honeymoon name," Bedient observed.

      "You see," the Captain concluded, "I can speak of The Pleiad only from the outside. That's the Señor's name for his establishment, possibly because there are seven wings to his castle, but others say it was the name of a gold-ship that he took in the early days. Anyway, Rey and I don't neighbor. He's becoming formidable, I'm told, in the politics of the Island. He's at the head of a very powerful colony nevertheless, and no matter what its inter-relations are, it hangs together against the law and the outside world. Rey wants more say back yonder at headquarters, and our Dictator, Jaffier, all things considered, is a very good man, but old and stubborn and impolitic. He won't be driven even by Celestino Rey, who in turn is not a man to be denied. He is probably richer than Equatoria, and then Coral City lives off this institution as Monaco lives off Monte Carlo. He doubtless commands the whole lower element of the town. The word is, Celestino Rey intends to run the Island first-hand—if he can't run it through the powers that are."

      All of which Bedient found of interest, inasmuch as he was passing through the heart of these strange affairs. Having any part in them seemed unearthly remote. The carriage was taking the gradual rise behind a pair of fine ponies, and the view behind, over The Pleiad to the sapphire water, was noble. The horizon, beyond the harbor distances, was a blazing intensity of light that stung the eyes to quick contraction. The Captain sat back in the cushions, weary from talking, but his face was happy, and he took in the exterior, and something of the inner proportions, of the young man, with a sense of awe. He did not try to explain yet—even to himself.

      The hacienda was slightly over twenty miles interior. Bedient was entranced by the sunset from the heights. Then the slow ride to the Carreras House through the darkened hills: the smell of warm earth from the thick growths by the trail-side; little stars slipping into place like the glisten of fireflies in a garden, or gems in a maiden's hair; a scandalously-naked new moon lying low, like an arc of white-hot wire in the purple twilight, and always behind them, a majestic splash of jewel-edged crimson which showed the West.

      And presently, from a high curve in the road, they saw the lights of the hacienda bold upon its eminence—and a dark valley between. Into this night they descended, for the last course of the journey; and as the ponies clattered upward again, white-coated natives came forth to meet them. Bedient was further astonished at their volubility and easy laughter. They spoke a debased Spanish, which the Captain had fallen into—as difficult of understanding for one whose medium was pure Castilian as for one who spoke English. There was that mystery upon the environs that always comes to one who reaches his destination in the darkness. And to Bedient the sensation was not wholly of joy. These were wild hills, not without grandeur, but there was something of chaos, too, to him who came from the roof of the world. He missed the peace of the greater mountains. His heart hungered to go out to the natives crowding around—white-toothed men and women of incessant laughter—but the tones of their voices checked the current. It was emptiness—but nothing he had to give seemed able to enter.

      The Captain was ill with fatigue. His face—the weakness expressed in the smiling mouth—remained before Bedient's mind, as he followed a giggling native boy to the large upper room which was for him. Rows of broad windows faced the South and East, while a corridor ran to the North for the cool wind at night. Electric lights and glistening black floors—the first effect came from these. Then the details: rugs that matched, by art or accident, as perfectly as a valley of various grain-fields pleases the eye from a mountain-side; a great teak bed, caned with bamboo strips and canopied with silk net, yards of which one could crush in his hand, so nearly immaterial was this mosquito fabric; sumptuous steamer-chairs; a leather reading-couch that could be moved to the best breeze or light with a touch of the finger; a broad-side of books and a vast writing-table, openly dimensioned to defy litter—the whole effect was that of coolness and silence and room. Everything a man needed seemed to be there and breathing spaciously. … Turning through a draped door, the astonished wanderer found completeness again—everything that makes a bath fragrant and refreshing—even to Carreras scent and a set of perfect English razors. … It was all new to Bedient. For an hour he tried things—and still there were drawers and cases of undiscovered novelties СКАЧАТЬ