The Jonas Lie Megapack: 14 Classic Novels and Stories Page 21

  CHAPTER XIV

  With a view to bring himself into harmony with his surroundings, he appeared next day in his suit of fine blue cloth, which he had brought with him in his bundle, together with sundry other articles, and what money he had still remaining from the pay which he had received at Monte Video. That he looked well in his handsome sailor dress was evident enough, from the surprised look with which he was greeted by Federigo’s mother, when he was presented to her. She had evidently expected to see in her son’s friend something in the style of the raw Brazilian sailor, a class of men who down there were generally drawn from the lowest dregs of the populace.

  She herself was a withered old woman, yellow as parchment, with a mass of thick grey hair gathered in a single knot at the back of her head. She wore heavy rings on her fingers, and large earrings; her small piercing eyes had a look of burnt-out passion; and her countenance wore in a stronger degree the furtive, ratlike expression which her son’s occasionally displayed.

  As regards her further characteristics, Salvé soon perceived that she was addicted to drink. She used to remain during the greater part of the day on the shady side of the house, or on the little veranda, with acachacas and water by her side, and incessantly smoking and rolling cigarettes; and she was often quite drunk as she mumbled her Ave Maria, and told her beads on her knees before going to bed in the evening. Still the other inmates of the house appeared to have great respect for her; and it was evident that she held the threads of whatever business they might have on hand.

  The señorita was out all the morning with the old mulatto woman, making purchases for the house, Federigo said, and informing herself as to what activity was being shown in their pursuit. When she returned, she avoided addressing herself directly to Salvé; and he observed that she handed over a quantity of money to her brother, which had the happy effect of bringing into his countenance a more cheerful look than it had hitherto worn that morning.

  “What have you done to my sister?” Federigo asked one day, laughing; “you are not in her good graces. She is dangerous,” he said, seriously; and added then, as if speculating on possibilities, “as long as you are in this house, at all events, you are safe. But mind, you are warned.”

  Federigo soon began to weary of their enforced confinement to the house, and in spite of his sister’s efforts to dissuade him, began to go out in the evenings, coming home very late, and in a gloomy, irritable humour—evidently, from the casual remarks he let fall, having lost all his money at play.

  The second morning of his stay in the house Salvé had perceived that there was a want of money; and having heard the brother and sister quarrelling one day when both were in a bad humour, he thought it best to carry out, at the first convenient moment, the determination at which he had arrived, and handed over to Federigo what money he had, with the exception of a single silver piastre, saying, “That it was only right he should pay for his lodging and board.”

  The money, though deprecatingly, was still accepted, and in the evening Federigo was out once more, his sister remaining at home.

  She and Salvé, on account of their ignorance of each other’s language, could not hold much conversation together, and Salvé was rather glad of this wall of separation between them, as it left him more at his ease. She had, however, recently looked more often at him with a sort of interest, and on several occasions had put questions to him through her brother. Her range of ideas was apparently not extensive, as her questions always turned upon the same topic—namely, what the women were like in his country; so that he soon came to know by heart all the Spanish terms which related to that subject.

  They were out on the veranda together that evening, and as she went past his back while he was leaning over in his seat, she drew her hand as if by accident lightly through his hair. If it had had the electricity of a cat’s, it would have given out a perfect shower of sparks, so enraged was he at the advance.

  When Federigo came home he flung his hat away angrily on to a chair, and drank down at a gulp a glass of rum that was standing on the table. He no longer wore the smart cloak he had on when he went out.

  “I have gambled away all your money!” he cried, in English, to Salvé, as if careless of further reticence, and made some remark then with an unpleasant laugh to his sister, who had evidently by her expression perceived at once how matters stood.

  “There’s my last piastre for you,” said Salvé, throwing it over to him. “Try your luck with it.”

  “He is successful in love,” said Paolina, tearfully, and with a naïveaffectation of superstition—“he is engaged.”

  When her brother, who was balancing the piastre on his forefinger, laughingly translated what she had said, Salvé replied snappishly, with an impatient glance at the señorita—

  “I am not engaged, and never shall be.”

  “Unsuccessful in love!” she broke out, gleefully; “and the last piastre! Tomorrow we shall win a hundred, two hundred, Federigo!”

  It was clearly the conviction of her heart; and she seized a mandolin and began to dance to her own accompaniment, her eyes resting as she did so upon Salvé with a peculiar expression.

  “Quick, Federigo!—why not this evening?” she cried, breaking off suddenly with a laugh, and throwing the mandolin from her on to the sofa. “Tomorrow his luck may be gone.”

  She seized her brother’s hat, crushed it down upon his head, and pushed him eagerly out of the door, going with him herself to open the wicket.

  She came back then to Salvé, and as they sat tête-à-tête in the lamplit room with doors and windows thrown wide open, the moonlight gleaming on the dark trees outside, and the night air perfumed with the scent of flowers, she endeavoured to ingratiate herself with him by pouring out his rum-and-water and by rolling his cigarettes, an art in which it appeared from her laughter and gestures that she thought him awkward. She was in a state of feverish excitement, and kept darting off to the wicket and back again.

  Salvé sat and smoked, and sipped his glass unconcernedly, whilst she rocked herself backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair, with her head thrown back, and her eyes steadily fixed upon him. He heard a sigh, and she said in a low, ingratiating tone—

  “I am afraid Federigo is unlucky.”

  Salvé was not so stupid as not to comprehend her meaning. He was quite aware that she was handsome as she sat there with her hand on her knee, and her well-formed foot gracefully brought into view; but his feeling was exclusively one of indignation that such a common Brazilian baggage should presume to bring herself into comparison with Elizabeth. He flung away his cigar impatiently, and went down into the garden, without attempting to conceal his aversion. He hated all women since the one he had fixed his heart on had disappointed him, and he strode backwards and forwards now in more than usual indignation against the sex.

  He was still pacing the garden when Federigo came back, heated and triumphant, with his cloak on his shoulder and a bag under his arm.

  “Nearly three hundred piastres!” he cried, clearing the garden in a succession of bounds.

  His sister had been asleep on the sofa, and sprang up in ecstasy at the intelligence; and they proceeded then with childish glee to spread out the silver on the table, and divide it into three. When Salvé absolutely refused to take more than his one piastre back again, there came actually a look of humble admiration into the señorita’s eyes. She could not comprehend such an act of self-sacrifice, although she seemed to vaguely feel that there was something noble about it. After a moment’s consideration she held out her hand and said—

  “Señor, give me the piastre you have in your hand, and I will give you another in return for it.”

  He did so, and she took it and kissed it repeatedly.

  “I shall play with this one tomorrow evening,” she cried joyfully, and put it into her bosom.

 
She carried out her intention, and came home beaming, with a whole bagful of piastres.

  It seemed that the family lived only by play. The son, it is true, was in connection with one or other of the political parties of the town, with the prospect of an appointment as officer in a volunteer corps if any rising took place; but that did not in the meantime bring in money, and how they managed to get along when luck went against them it was not easy to see.

  Salvé meanwhile was becoming rather tired of being on land. The seclusion had suited him well enough at first, until the señorita had begun to pay him attentions; but now that she evidently remained at home all day solely on his account, to dress at him, and play off all sorts of coquetry upon him, he began to find it intolerable; and when the Juno at last had sailed, he announced one day that he meant to go down to the harbour and look for employment.

  The señorita turned pale, but soon recovered her self-possession, and even joked with him about it; and later on her brother persuaded him to defer his intention for three days, until he had attended a gathering of Federigo’s friends, which was to take place one night down in one of the suburbs.

  That evening, when her brother had gone out as usual to play, the señorita sat down in the window of the room where Salvé was, and through which he would have to pass to go into the garden. She had undone her luxuriant hair, and had put on a languishing look, and every now and then thrummed absently on her guitar, humming gently to herself as she fixed her black eyes upon him. Salvé saw himself in a manner besieged, and felt half inclined to brush past her and escape into the garden; but it would have seemed too deliberately unfriendly. The only sign which betrayed his consciousness of the situation was the somewhat hasty way in which he puffed his cigarette.

  “You really mean to leave us?” she said at last sadly, in almost a beseeching tone.

  “Yes, señorita,” was the reply, and evidently it came from the bottom of his heart; he was angry, and weary of her importunity.

  He had hardly said it before, thrusting her hand into her bosom, she had sprung to her feet, and a stiletto whizzed past his ear, and stuck quivering in the wall close to his head. Her supple body was still in motion, her face was pale, and her eyes were flashing: then with a sudden transition she threw herself back and laughed.

  “Were you frightened?” she cried. But Salvé showed no sign of it. He was provoked, but cool; and not being the kind of man who would deign to engage in a conflict with a woman, he left the stiletto sticking in the wall, though at first he had thought of seizing it.

  “Look here!” she said, suddenly darting over and drawing it out, and then practising with it, laughing all the while, at various spots on the walls of the room, which she hit every time to a nicety.

  “You were frightened—confess that you were,” she said, teasingly, sitting down opposite to him, heated with the exercise she had gone through. She gazed into his face with her cheek resting on her hand and her elbow on the table. “You were afraid; and now you are angry. The women in your country don’t do such things!”

  Salvé turned to her with a look of icy rebuff. “No, señorita,” he replied, curtly, and went down into the garden.

  Thereupon she seized the guitar again, and began strumming an accompaniment apparently to her thoughts. It was no longer lively music she played, but something of a menacing strain, in keeping with the look in her eyes, and she seemed in a manner to hiss the air through her teeth.

  Later on in the evening she came tripping over to him with a coquettish smile, and after the custom of the country offered him a cigarette, which she had begun to smoke herself. When he rather ungallantly declined it, she exclaimed furiously, stamping her foot—

  “Señor!”

  But she recovered herself in a moment, and said laughing, with at all events apparent good-nature, something which meant that she understood that this might perhaps not be a custom in his country.

  Salvé felt much relieved when her brother came home, and told him that the meeting he was waiting for was to take place on the following evening.

  CHAPTER XV

  It was into a badly-lighted tavern, with two or three rooms leading out of one another, that his friend then conducted him. Men of the most various social positions, many with a military look, and in half-threadbare uniforms, filled the inner rooms; and in the outer one he had seen upon entering a number of seafaring men, who looked like Americans, and who nodded to him on the strength of his sailor’s dress. There were several women, more or less well dressed, moving about among them, and others standing with eager faces over the gambling-table in the inner room. All were drinking acachacas, and the whole place was pervaded with a cloud of tobacco-smoke, out of which there came a deafening clamour of talk.

  Salvé had a seat found for him by his friend at a long table, amongst a number of bronzed, bearded men, with large hats, leather breeches, and spurs, whose company he by no means cared about. They looked like mounted bullock-drivers, such as he had seen at Monte Video, or still more, perhaps, like brigands, or banditti.

  “They belong to Mendez’s volunteer corps,” whispered Federigo, as he presented him then to the chief of the party, who sat at the top of the table—a powerful fellow, with a weather-beaten complexion, heavy black mustachios, and a pair of small active eyes, which, more than once afterwards, when Salvé was not looking, were turned critically upon him.

  Every now and then they clinked their glasses together to some party toast; but otherwise they were quiet enough at first. People of the same calibre sat round other tables in the immediate neighbourhood; and at another were intermingled well-dressed persons from the town, who were carrying on a whispered conversation, and who appeared anxious.

  The shouting, and the noise, and the laughter kept increasing. There were already drunken faces at the table, and in several directions quarrelling and the sound of blows were beginning to be heard. Federigo, who seemed to be known to many in the rooms, had mixed with the crowd, and Salvé’s neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from them with a whole skin, and he felt in his breast-pocket to see that his knife was there.

  One of the North Americans who had nodded to him, in virtue of his sailor’s dress, when he entered, came over to him now and asked him to come and sit with them; but as he rather felt himself under Federigo’s charge, he declined just then. Shortly after, to his surprise, he saw the señorita standing at the gaming-table, with her head, which was all he could see, beautifully dressed; and he observed that the eyes of the keeper of the tavern—a tall, lean Portuguese, with a long, sallow face, and hardly any hair on his head, who himself presided at the table—were turned towards her continually with a look of humble, tender concern. She was playing excitedly, and losing every time. At last she stopped, in evident irritation, and beckoned him to one side, with a certain authority, in spite of his having the table to attend to.

  They spoke eagerly together, and Salvé caught a rapid glance directed towards himself by the señorita, which he did not at all like. She was unnaturally pale; and he saw that she finally gave the other her hand, which he kissed with an enraptured expression, and she then disappeared from the room.

  The landlord’s face beamed the whole evening afterwards, and he bowed politely to Federigo as he passed the table. The latter, the next time he came near Salvé, whispered rather scornfully—

  “I believe my sister has bartered away her soul this evening, and promised to marry that old money-
bag there who keeps the tavern. Congratulate us, amigo mio!”

  Salvé observed that the said money-bag conferred now more than once with the man at the head of his own table, and was apparently making terms with him; and that the latter also, when he thought he was not observed, glanced over at himself in a way that was very far from putting him at his ease.

  The American who had spoken to him before—a tall, athletic-looking man, with a fair beard round a hard Yankee face, and with a remnant of gold lace on the sleeve of his jacket—had since been at the gaming-table, and had been losing one doubloon after another.

  “They don’t play fair, my lad!” he cried in English to Salvé, to whom he seemed anxious to make up.

  “I daresay not,” was the reply; “it’s a vile den.”

  “What country do you hail from?”

  “Norway.”

  “Ah! Norwegian. Good sailors.”

  “Deserted at Rio?” he asked then, with a laugh, as if he expected, as a matter of course, an answer in the affirmative.

  “Shall I play for you?” he asked presently.

  “No money.”

  “Here’s a guinea on account of your wages on board the ‘Stars and Stripes,’ for Valparaiso and Chinchas!” he cried, with a laugh that was heard above the surrounding din; and flinging a gold piece on the table, he lost it.

  He turned, and putting his hand to his mouth, shouted—

  “One more on account!” and another gold piece shared the fate of the first.

  “One more on account!” there came again, and with the same result.