The Pilot and his Wife Part 10

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 Salve 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. "To-morrow 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 Salve, and as they sat _tete-a-tete_ 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.

Salve sat and smoked, and sipped his gla.s.s 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."

Salve 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 s.e.x.

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 Salve absolutely refused to take more than his one piastre back again, there came actually a look of humble admiration into the senorita's eyes. She could not comprehend such an act of self-sacrifice, although she seemed to vaguely feel that there was something n.o.ble about it. After a moment's consideration she held out her hand and said--

"Senor, 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 to-morrow 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.

Salve meanwhile was becoming rather tired of being on land. The seclusion had suited him well enough at first, until the senorita 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 senorita 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 senorita sat down in the window of the room where Salve was, and through which he would have to pa.s.s 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. Salve 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, senorita," 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 Salve 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!"

Salve turned to her with a look of icy rebuff. "No, senorita," 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--

"Senor!"

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.

Salve 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.

Salve 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 Salve was not looking, were turned critically upon him.

Every now and then they clinked their gla.s.ses 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 Salve'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 senorita 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 Salve caught a rapid glance directed towards himself by the senorita, 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 pa.s.sed the table. The latter, the next time he came near Salve, 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_!"

Salve 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 Salve, 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."