Toward four o’clock that afternoon,
a very thin, fair young man shakily heaved himself
into a hammock under the trees in that broad backyard
wherein, as Valentine Corliss had yesterday noticed,
the last iron monarch of the herd, with unabated arrogance,
had entered domestic service as a clothes-prop.
The young man, who was of delicate appearance and
unhumanly pale, stretched himself at full length on
his back, closed his eyes, moaned feebly, cursed the
heat in a stricken whisper. Then, as a locust
directly overhead violently shattered the silence,
and seemed like to continue the outrage forever, the
shaken lounger stopped his ears with his fingers and
addressed the insect in old Saxon.
A white jacketed mulatto came from
the house bearing something on a silver tray.
“Julip, Mist’ Vilas?” he said sympathetically.
Ray Vilas rustily manoeuvred into
a sitting position; and, with eyes still closed, made
shift to accept the julep in both hands, drained half
of it, opened his eyes, and thanked the cup-bearer
feebly, in a voice and accent reminiscent of the melodious
South.
“And I wonder,” he added, “if you
can tell me ”
“I’m Miz William
Lindley’s house-man, Joe Vaxdens,” said
the mulatto, in the tone of an indulgent nurse.
“You in Miz Lindley’s backyard right
now, sittin’ in a hammick.”
“I seem to gather almost that
much for myself,” returned the patient.
“But I should like to know how I got here.”
“Jes’ come out the front
door an’ walk’ aroun’ the house an’
set down. Mist’ Richard had to go downtown;
tole me not to wake you; but I heerd you splashin’
in the bath an’ you tole me you din’ want
no breakfuss ”
“Yes, Joe, I’m aware of
what’s occurred since I woke,” said Vilas,
and, throwing away the straws, finished the julep at
one draught. “What I want to know is how
I happened to be here at Mr. Lindley’s.”
“Mist’ Richard brought
you las’ night, suh. I don’ know where
he got you, but I heered a considerable thrashum aroun’,
up an’ down the house, an’ so I come help
him git you to bed in one vem spare-rooms.”
Joe chuckled ingratiatingly. “Lord name!
You cert’n’y wasn’t askin’
fer no bed!”
He took the glass, and the young man
reclined again in the hammock, a hot blush vanquishing
his pallor. “Was I was I very
bad, Joe?”
“Oh, you was all right,”
Joe hastened to reassure him. “You was
jes’ on’y a little bit tight.”
“Did it really seem only a little?”
the other asked hopefully.
“Yessuh,” said Joe promptly.
“Nothin’ at all. You jes’ wanted
to rare roun’ little bit. Mist’ Richard
took gun away from you ”
“What?”
“Oh, I tole him you wasn’
goin’ use it!” Joe laughed. “But
you so wile be din’ know what you do. You
cert’n’y was drunkes’ man I
see in long while,” he said admiringly.
“You pert near had us bofe wore out ‘fore
you give up, an’ Mist’ Richard an’
me, we use’ to han’lin’ drunkum
man, too use’ to have big times week-in,
week-out ‘ith Mist’ Will at’s
Mist’ Richard’s brother, you know, suh,
what died o’ whiskey.” He laughed
again in high good-humour. “You cert’n’y
laid it all over any vem olé times we had ‘ith
Mist’ Will!”
Mr. Vilas shifted his position in
the hammock uneasily; Joe’s honest intentions
to be of cheer to the sufferer were not wholly successful.
“I tole Mist’ Richard,”
the kindly servitor continued, “it was a mighty
good thing his ma gone up Norf endurin’ the hot
spell. Sence Mist’ Will die she can’t
hardly bear to see drunkum man aroun’ the house.
Mist’ Richard hardly ever tech nothin’
himself no more. You goin’ feel better,
suh, out in the f’esh air,” he concluded,
comfortingly as he moved away.
“Joe!”
“Yessuh.”
Mr. Vilas pulled himself upright for
a moment. “What use in the world do you
reckon one julep is to me?”
“Mist’ Richard say to
give you one drink ef you ask’ for it, suh,”
answered Joe, looking troubled.
“Well, you’ve told me
enough now about last night to make any man hang himself,
and I’m beginning to remember enough more ”
“Pshaw, Mist’ Vilas,”
the coloured man interrupted, deprecatingly, “you
din’ broke nothin’! You on’y
had couple glass’ wine too much. You din’
make no trouble at all; jes’ went right off to
bed. You ought seen some vem olé times me
an Mist’ Richard use to have ’ith Mist’
Will ”
“Joe!”
“Yessuh.”
“I want three more juleps and I want them right
away.”
The troubled expression upon the coloured
man’s face deepened. “Mist’
Richard say jes’ one, suh,” he said reluctantly.
“I’m afraid ”
“Joe.”
“Yessuh.”
“I don’t know,”
said Ray Vilas slowly, “whether or not you ever
heard that I was born and raised in Kentucky.”
“Yessuh,” returned Joe humbly. “I
heerd so.”
“Well, then,” said the
young man in a quiet voice, “you go and get
me three juleps. I’ll settle it with Mr.
Richard.”
“Yessuh.”
But it was with a fifth of these renovators
that Lindley found his guest occupied, an hour later,
while upon a small table nearby a sixth, untouched,
awaited disposal beside an emptied coffee-cup.
Also, Mr. Vilas was smoking a cigarette with unshadowed
pleasure; his eye was bright, his expression care-free;
and he was sitting up in the hammock, swinging cheerfully,
and singing the “Marseillaise.” Richard
approached through the yard, coming from the street
without entering the house; and anxiety was manifest
in the glance he threw at the green-topped glass upon
the table, and in his greeting.
“Hail, gloom!” returned
Mr. Vilas, cordially, and, observing the anxious glance,
he swiftly removed the untouched goblet from the table
to his own immediate possession. “Two simultaneous
juleps will enhance the higher welfare,” he
explained airily. “Sir, your Mr. Varden
was induced to place a somewhat larger order with us
than he protested to be your intention. Trusting
you to exonerate him from all so-and-so and that these
few words, etcetera!” He depleted the elder
glass of its liquor, waved it in the air, cried, “Health,
host!” and set it upon the table. “I
believe I do not err in assuming my cup-bearer’s
name to be Varden, although he himself, in his simple
Americo-Africanism, is pleased to pluralize it.
Do I fret you, host?”
“Not in the least,” said
Richard, dropping upon a rustic bench, and beginning
to fan himself with his straw hat. “What’s
the use of fretting about a boy who hasn’t sense
enough to fret about himself?”
“`Boy?’” Mr. Vilas
affected puzzlement. “Do I hear aright?
Sir, do you boy me? Bethink you, I am now the
shell of five mint-juleps plus, and am pot-valiant.
And is this mere capacity itself to be lightly boyed?
Again, do I not wear a man’s garment, a man’s
garnitures? Heed your answer; for this serge,
these flannels, and these silks are yours, and though
I may not fill them to the utmost, I do to the longmost,
precisely. I am the stature of a man; had it
not been for your razor I should wear the beard of
a man; therefore I’ll not be boyed. What
have you to say in defence?”
“Hadn’t you better let
me get Joe to bring you something to eat?” asked
Richard.
“Eat?” Mr. Vilas disposed
of the suggestion with mournful hauteur. “There!
For the once I forgive you. Let the subject never
be mentioned between us again. We will tactfully
turn to a topic of interest. My memories of last
evening, at first hazy and somewhat disconcerting,
now merely amuse me. Following the pleasant Spanish
custom, I went a-serenading, but was kidnapped from
beneath the precious casement by by a zealous
arrival. Host, `zealous arrival’ is not
the julep in action: it is a triumph of paraphrase.”
“I wish you’d let Joe
take you back to bed,” said Richard.
“Always bent on thoughts of
the flesh,” observed the other sadly. “Beds
are for bodies, and I am become a thing of spirit.
My soul is grateful a little for your care of its
casing. You behold, I am generous: I am
able to thank my successor to Carmen!”
Lindley’s back stiffened. “Vilas!”
“Spare me your protests.”
The younger man waved his hand languidly. “You
wish not to confer upon this subject ”
“It’s a subject we’ll omit,”
said Richard.
His companion stopped swinging, allowed
the hammock to come to rest; his air of badinage fell
from him; for the moment he seemed entirely sober;
and he spoke with gentleness. “Mr. Lindley,
if you please, I am still a gentleman at
times.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Richard quickly.
“No need of that!” The
speaker’s former careless and boisterous manner
instantly resumed possession. “You must
permit me to speak of a wholly fictitious lady, a
creature of my wanton fancy, sir, whom I call Carmen.
It will enable me to relieve my burdened soul of some
remarks I have long wished to address to your excellent
self.”
“Oh, all right,” muttered Richard, much
annoyed.
“Let us imagine,” continued
Mr. Vilas, beginning to swing again, “that I
thought I had won this Carmen ”
Lindley uttered an exclamation, shifted
his position in his chair, and fixed a bored attention
upon the passing vehicles in the glimpse of the street
afforded between the house and the shrubberies along
the side fence. The other, without appearing to
note his annoyance, went on, cheerfully:
“She was a precocious huntress:
early in youth she passed through the accumulator
stage, leaving it to the crude or village belle to
rejoice in numbers and the excitement of teasing cubs
in the bear-pit. It is the nature of this imagined
Carmen to play fiercely with one imitation of love
after another: a man thinks he wins her, but
it is merely that she has chosen him for
a while. And Carmen can have what she chooses;
if the man exists who could show her that she cannot,
she would follow him through the devil’s dance;
but neither you nor I would be that man, my dear sir.
We assume that Carmen’s eyes have been mine her
heart is another matter and that she has
grown weary of my somewhat Sicilian manner of looking
into them, and, following her nature and the law of
periodicity which Carmens must bow to, she seeks a
cooler gaze and calls Mr. Richard Lindley to come
and take a turn at looking. Now, Mr. Richard
Lindley is straight as a die: he will not even
show that he hears the call until he is sure that I
have been dismissed: therefore, I have no quarrel
with him. Also, I cannot even hate him, for in
my clearer julep vision I see that he is but an interregnum.
Let me not offend my friend: chagrin is to be
his as it is mine. I was a strong draught, he
but the quieting potion our Carmen took to settle
it. We shall be brothers in woe some day.
Nothing in the universe lasts except Hell: Life
is running water; Love, a looking-glass; Death, an
empty theatre! That reminds me: as you are
not listening I will sing.”
He finished his drink and lifted his
voice hilariously:
“The heavenly stars
far above her,
The wind of the
infinite sea,
Who know all her perfidy,
love her,
So why call it
madness in me?
Ah, why call it
madness ”
He set his glass with a crash upon
the table, staring over his companion’s shoulder.
“What, if you please,
is the royal exile who thus seeks refuge in our hermitage?”
His host had already observed the
approaching visitor with some surprise, and none too
graciously. It was Valentine Corliss: he
had turned in from the street and was crossing the
lawn to join the two young men. Lindley rose,
and, greeting him with sufficient cordiality, introduced
Mr. Vilas, who bestowed upon the newcomer a very lively
interest.
“You are as welcome, Mr. Corliss,”
said this previous guest, earnestly, “as if
these sylvan shades were mine. I hail you, not
only for your own sake, but because your presence encourages
a hope that our host may offer refreshment to the
entire company.”
Corliss smilingly declined to be a
party to this diplomacy, and seated himself beside
Richard Lindley on the bench.
“Then I relapse!” exclaimed
Mr. Vilas, throwing himself back full-length in the
hammock. “I am not replete, but content.
I shall meditate. Gentlemen, speak on!”
He waved his hand in a gracious gesture,
indicating his intention to remain silent, and lay
quiet, his eyes fixed steadfastly upon Corliss.
“I was coming to call on you,”
said the latter to Lindley, “but I saw you from
the street and thought you mightn’t mind my being
as informal as I used to be, so many years ago.”
“Of course,” said Richard.
“I have a sinister purpose in
coming,” Mr. Corliss laughingly went on.
“I want to bore you a little first, and then
make your fortune. No doubt that’s an old
story to you, but I happen to be one of the adventurers
whose argosies are laden with real cargoes. Nobody
knows who has or hasn’t money to invest nowadays,
and of course I’ve no means of knowing whether
you have or not you see what a direct
chap I am but if you have, or can lay hold
of some, I can show you how to make it bring you an
immense deal more.”
“Naturally,” said Richard
pleasantly, “I shall be glad if you can do that.”
“Then I’ll come to the
point. It is exceedingly simple; that’s
certainly one attractive thing about it.”
Corliss took some papers and unmounted photographs
from his pocket, and began to spread them open on
the bench between himself and Richard. “No
doubt you know Southern Italy as well as I do.”
“Oh, I don’t `know’
it. I’ve been to Naples; down to Paestum;
drove from Salerno to Sorrentoby Amalfi; but that
was years ago.”
“Here’s a large scale
map that will refresh your memory.” He
unfolded it and laid it across their knees; it was
frayed with wear along the folds, and had been heavily
marked and dotted with red and blue pencillings.
“My millions are in this large irregular section,”
he continued. “It’s the anklebone
and instep of Italy’s boot; this sizable province
called Basilicata, east of Salerno, north of Calabria.
And I’ll not hang fire on the point, Lindley.
What I’ve got there is oil.”
“Olives?” asked Richard, puzzled.
“Hardly!” Corliss laughed.
“Though of course one doesn’t connect
petroleum with the thought of Italy, and of all Italy,
Southern Italy. But in spite of the years I’ve
lived there, I’ve discovered myself to be so
essentially American and commercial that I want to
drench the surface of that antique soil with the brown,
bad-smelling crude oil that lies so deep beneath it.
Basilicata is the coming great oil-field of the world and
that’s my secret. I dare to tell it here,
as I shouldn’t dare in Naples.”
“Shouldn’t `dare’?”
Richard repeated, with growing interest, and no doubt
having some vague expectation of a tale of the Camorra.
To him Naples had always seemed of all cities the most
elusive and incomprehensible, a laughing, thieving,
begging, mandolin-playing, music-and-murder haunted
metropolis, about which anything was plausible; and
this impression was not unique, as no inconsiderable
proportion of Mr. Lindley’s fellow-countrymen
share it, a fact thoroughly comprehended by the returned
native.
“It isn’t a case of not
daring on account of any bodily danger,” explained
Corliss.
“No,” Richard smiled reminiscently.
“I don’t believe that would have much
weight with you if it were. You certainly showed
no symptoms of that sort in your extreme youth.
I remember you had the name of being about the most
daring and foolhardy boy in town.”
“I grew up to be cautious enough
in business, though,” said the other, shaking
his head gravely. “I haven’t been
able to afford not being careful.” He adjusted
the map a prefatory gesture. “Now,
I’ll make this whole affair perfectly clear to
you. It’s a simple matter, as are most
big things. I’ll begin by telling you of
Moliterno he’s been my most intimate
friend in that part of the continent for a great many
years; since I went there as a boy, in fact.”
He sketched a portrait of his friend,
Prince Moliterno, bachelor chief of a historic house,
the soul of honour, “land-poor”; owning
leagues and leagues of land, hills and mountains, broken
towers and ruins, in central Basilicata, a province
described as wild country and rough, off the rails
and not easy to reach. Moliterno and the narrator
had gone there to shoot; Corliss had seen “surface
oil” upon the streams and pools; he recalled
the discovery of oil near his own boyhood home in
America; had talked of it to Moliterno, and both men
had become more and more interested, then excited.
They decided to sink a well.
Corliss described picturesquely the
difficulties of this enterprise, the hardships and
disappointments; how they dragged the big tools over
the mountains by mule power; how they had kept it
all secret; how he and Moliterno had done everything
with the help of peasant labourers and one experienced
man, who had “seen service in the Persian oil-fields.”
He gave the business reality, colouring
it with details relevant and irrelevant, anecdotes
and wayside incidents: he was fluent, elaborate,
explicit throughout. They sank five wells, he
said, “at the angles of this irregular pentagon
you see here on the map, outlined in blue. These
red circles are the wells.” Four of the
wells “came in tremendous,” but they had
managed to get them sealed after wasting he
was “sorry to think how many thousand barrels
of oil.” The fifth well was so enormous
that they had not been able to seal it at the time
of the speaker’s departure for America.
“But I had a cablegram this
morning,” he added, “letting me know they’ve
managed to do it at last. Here is, the cablegram.”
He handed Richard a form signed “Antonio Moliterno.”
“Now, to go back to what I said
about not `daring’ to speak of this in Naples,”
he continued, smiling. “The fear is financial,
not physical.”
The knowledge of the lucky strike,
he explained, must be kept from the “Neapolitan
money-sharks.” A third of the land so rich
in oil already belonged to the Moliterno estates,
but it was necessary to obtain possession of the other
two thirds “before the secret leaks into Naples.”
So far, it was safe, the peasants of Basilicata being
“as medieval a lot as one could wish.”
He related that these peasants thought that the devils
hiding inside the mountains had been stabbed by the
drills, and that the oil was devils’ blood.
“You can see some of the country
people hanging about, staring at a well, in this kodak,
though it’s not a very good one.”
He put into Richard’s hand a small, blurred
photograph showing a spouting well with an indistinct
crowd standing in an irregular semicircle before it.
“Is this the Basilicatan peasant
costume?” asked Richard, indicating a figure
in the foreground, the only one revealed at all definitely.
“It looks more oriental. Isn’t the
man wearing a fez?”
“Let me see,” responded
Mr. Corliss very quickly. “Perhaps I gave
you the wrong picture. Oh, no,” he laughed
easily, holding the kodak closer to his eyes; “that’s
all right: it is a fez. That’s old
Salviati, our engineer, the man I spoke of who’d
worked in Persia, you know; he’s always worn
a fez since then. Got in the habit of it out
there and says he’ll never give it up. Moliterno’s
always chaffing him about it. He’s a faithful
old chap, Salviati.”
“I see.” Lindley
looked thoughtfully at the picture, which the other
carelessly returned to his hand. “There
seems to be a lot of oil there.”
“It’s one of the smaller
wells at that. And you can see from the kodak
that it’s just `blowing’ not
an eruption from being `shot,’ or the people
wouldn’t stand so near. Yes; there’s
an ocean of oil under that whole province; but we
want a lot of money to get at it. It’s
mountain country; our wells will all have to go over
fifteen-hundred feet, and that’s expensive.
We want to pipe the oil to Salerno, where the Standard’s
ships will take it from us, and it will need a great
deal for that. But most of all we want money
to get hold of the land; we must control the whole
field, and it’s big!”
“How did you happen to come here to finance
it?”
“I was getting to that.
Moliterno himself is as honourable a man as breathes
God’s air. But my experience has been that
Neapolitan capitalists are about the cleverest and
slipperiest financiers in the world. We could
have financed it twenty times over in Naples in a
day, but neither Moliterno nor I was willing to trust
them. The thing is enormous, you see a
really colossal fortune and Italian law
is full of ins and outs, and the first man we talked
to confidentially would have given us his word to play
straight, and, the instant we left him, would have
flown post-haste for Basilicata and grabbed for himself
the two thirds of the field not yet in our hands.
Moliterno and I talked it over many, many times; we
thought of going to Rome for the money, to Paris, to
London, to New York; but I happened to remember the
old house here that my aunt had left me I
wanted to sell it, to add whatever it brought to the
money I’ve already put in and then
it struck me I might raise the rest here as well as
anywhere else.”
The other nodded. “I understand.”
“I suppose you’ll think
me rather sentimental,” Corliss went on, with
a laugh which unexpectedly betrayed a little shyness.
“I’ve never forgotten that I was born
here was a boy here. In all my wanderings
I’ve always really thought of this as home.”
His voice trembled slightly and his
face flushed; he smiled deprecatingly as though in
apology for these symptoms of emotion; and at that
both listeners felt (perhaps with surprise) the man’s
strong attraction. There was something very engaging
about him: in the frankness of his look and in
the slight tremor in his voice; there was something
appealing and yet manly in the confession, by this
thoroughgoing cosmopolite, of his real feeling for
the home-town.
“Of course I know how very few
people, even among the `old citizens,’ would
have any recollection whatever of me,” he went
on; “but that doesn’t make any difference
in my sentiment for the place and its people.
That street out yonder was named for my grandfather:
there’s a statue of my great uncle in the State
House yard; all my own blood: belonged here,
and though I have been a wanderer and may not be remembered naturally
am not remembered yet the name is
honoured here, and I I ”
He faltered again, then concluded with quiet earnestness:
“I thought that if my good luck was destined
to bring fortunes to others, it might as well be to
my own kind that at least I’d offer
them the chance before I offered it to any one else.”
He turned and looked Richard in the face. “That’s
why I’m here, Mr. Lindley.”
The other impulsively put out his
hand. “I understand,” he said heartily.
“Thank you.” Corliss
changed his tone for one less serious. “You’ve
listened very patiently and I hope you’ll be
rewarded for it. Certainly you will if you decide
to come in with us. May I leave the maps and
descriptions with you?”
“Yes, indeed. I’ll
look them over carefully and have another talk with
you about it.”
“Thank heaven, that’s
over!” exclaimed the lounger in the hammock,
who had not once removed his fascinated stare from
the expressive face of Valentine Corliss. “If
you have now concluded with dull care, allow me to
put a vital question: Mr. Corliss, do you sing?”
The gentleman addressed favoured him
with a quizzical glance from between half-closed lids,
and probably checking an impulse to remark that he
happened to know that his questioner sometimes sang,
replied merely, “No.”
“It is a pity.”
“Why?”
“Nothing,” returned the
other, inconsequently. “It just struck me
that you ought to sing the Toreador song.”
Richard Lindley, placing the notes
and maps in his pocket, dropped them, and, stooping,
began to gather the scattered papers with a very red
face. Corliss, however, laughed good-naturedly.
“That’s most flattering,”
he said; “though there are other things in `Carmen’
I prefer probably because one doesn’t
hear them so eternally.”
Vilas pulled himself up to a sitting
position and began to swing again. “Observe
our host, Mr. Corliss,” he commanded gayly.
“He is a kind old Dobbin, much beloved, but
cares damn little to hear you or me speak of music.
He’d even rather discuss your oil business than
listen to us talk of women, whereas nothing except
women ever really interests you, my dear sir.
He’s not our kind of man,” he concluded,
mournfully; “not at all our kind of man!”
“I hope,” Corliss suggested,
“he’s going to be my kind of man in the
development of these oil-fields.”
“How ridic” Mr.
Vilas triumphed over the word after a slight struggle “ulous!
I shall review that: ridiculous of you to pretend
to be interested in oil-fields. You are not that
sort of person whatever. Nothing could be clearer
than that you would never waste the time demanded
by fields of oil. Groundlings call this `the
mechanical age’ a vulgar error.
My dear sir, you and I know that it is the age of
Woman! Even poets have begun to see that she
is alive. Formerly we did not speak of her at
all, but of late years she has become such a scandal
that she is getting talked about. Even our dramas,
which used to be all blood, have become all flesh.
I wish I were dead but will continue my
harangue because the thought is pellucid. Women
selecting men to mate with are of only two kinds,
just as there are but two kinds of children in a toy-shop.
One child sets its fancy on one partic” the
orator paused, then continued “on
one certain toy and will make a distressing scene
if she doesn’t get it: she will have that
one; she will go straight to it, clasp it and keep
it; she won’t have any other. The other
kind of woman is to be understood if you will make
the experiment of taking the other kind of child to
a toy-shop and telling her you will buy her any toy
in the place, but that you will buy her only one.
If you do this in the morning, she will still be in
the shop when it is closing for the night, because,
though she runs to each toy in turn with excitement
and delight, she sees another over her shoulder, and
the one she has not touched is always her choice until
she has touched it! Some get broken in the handling.
For my part, my wires are working rather rustily, but
I must obey the Stage-Manager. For my requiem
I wish somebody would ask them to play Gounod’s
masterpiece.”
“What’s that?” asked Corliss, amused.
“`The Funeral March of a Marionette!’”
“I suppose you mean that for
a cheerful way of announcing that you are a fatalist.”
“Fatalism? That is only
a word,” declared Mr. Vilas gravely. “If
I am not a puppet then I am a god. Somehow, I
do not seem to be a god. If a god is a god, one
thinks he would know it himself. I now yield
the floor. Thanking you cordially, I believe there
is a lady walking yonder who commands salutation.”
He rose to his feet, bowing profoundly.
Cora Madison was passing, strolling rather briskly
down the street, not in the direction of her home.
She waved her parasol with careless gayety to the trio
under the trees, and, going on, was lost to their sight.
“Hello!” exclaimed Corliss,
looking at his watch with a start of surprise.
“I have two letters to write for the evening
mail. I must be off.”
At this, Ray Vilas’s eyes still
fixed upon him, as they had been throughout the visit opened
to their fullest capacity, in a gaze of only partially
alcoholic wildness.
Entirely aware of this singular glare,
but not in the least disconcerted by it, the recipient
proffered his easy farewells. “I had no
idea it was so late. Good afternoon. Mr.
Vilas, I have been delighted with your diagnosis.
Lindley, I’m at your disposal when you’ve
looked over my data. My very warm thanks for your
patience, and addio!”
Lindley looked after him as he strode
quickly away across the green lawn, turning, at the
street, in the direction Cora had taken; and the troubled
Richard felt his heart sink with vague but miserable
apprehension. There was a gasp of desperation
beside him, and the sound of Ray Vilas’s lips
parting and closing with little noises of pain.
“So he knows her,” said
the boy, his thin body shaking. “Look at
him, damn him! See his deep chest, that conqueror’s
walk, the easy, confident, male pride of him:
a true-born, natural rake the Toreador
all over!”
His agitation passed suddenly; he
broke into a loud laugh, and flung a reckless hand
to his companion’s shoulder.
“You good old fool,” he
cried. “You’ll never play Don Jose!”