There is little along the Spanish Main. Things happen there . Even Time seems to hang his daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a 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 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 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 path. They who had most cheered the hours were gone. Clancy had sailed on a Spanish barque for , a cut across the and then a further voyage to end at Calao, where the fighting was said to be on. Geddie, whose quiet and nature had once served to the frequent dull reaction of lotus eating, was now a home-man, happy with his bright , 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 , most discerning and eclectic of beasts, place sealing-wax midway on his programme of topics that fall and diverting upon the ear.
Atwood was gone—he of the back porch and cunning. Dr. Gregg, with his trepanning story smouldering within him, was a whiskered volcano, always showing signs of , and was not to be considered in the ranks of those who might contribute to the amelioration of . The new '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 . 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 of fellowship and entertainment among the foreign of Coralio.
And then Dicky Maloney dropped down from the clouds upon the town, and amused it.
Nobody knew where Dicky Maloney hailed from or how he reached Coralio. He appeared there one day; and that was all. He said that he came on the fruit steamer Thor; but an of the Thor's passenger list of that date was found to be Maloneyless. Curiosity, however, soon perished; and Dicky 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 grin, a rather dark or much sunburned , and a head of the red hair ever seen in that country. Speaking the Spanish language as well as he 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 "Dicky"; 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 Dicky 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 was had concerning the object of his 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 Dicky saw Pasa, the daughter of Madama Ortiz, sitting in the side-door of the Hotel de los Estranjeros. He stopped in his tracks, still, for the first time in Coralio; and then he sped, swift as a deer, to find Vasquez, a native youth, to present him.
The young men had named Pasa "La Santita Naranjadita." Naranjadita is a Spanish word for a certain colour that you must go to more trouble to describe in English. By saying "The little saint, 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 whatever attends upon the other commodities. For rum-making, mind you, is a government monopoly; and to keep a government dispensary assures respectability if not preëminence. 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 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 line of chairs set against the wall of this room. They were there to the heart of "La Santita." Their method (which is not proof against intelligent competition) consisted of expanding the chest, looking valorous, and consuming a gross or two of cigarettes. Even saints delicately oranged prefer to be wooed differently.
Doña Pasa would tide over the vast of nicotinized silence with music from her guitar, while she wondered if the romances she had read about and more—more contiguous cavaliers were all lies. At somewhat regular Madama would in from the dispensary with a sort of drought-suggesting gleam in her eye, and there would be a of stiffly-starched white trousers as one of the caballeros would propose an to the bar.
That Dicky 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 .
In an incredibly short space of time after his first sight of her he was there, seated close beside her rocking chair. There were no back-against-the-wall poses in Dicky's theory of wooing. His plan of subjection was an attack at close range. To carry the with one concentrated, , , irresistible escalade—that was Dicky's way.
Pasa was 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 of her native land. And yet here she to the first red-haired scamp with a tongue and a charming smile that came along and courted her properly.
Very soon Dicky took her to the little church on the corner of the , and "Mrs. Maloney" was added to her string of names.
And it was her fate to sit, with her patient, saintly eyes and figure like a bisque , behind the counter of the little shop, while Dicky drank and with his acquaintances.
The women, with their naturally fine instinct, saw a chance for vivisection, and delicately 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 Dicky's shop. While the front of it was dark, in the little room back of it Dicky 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 doings were noticed after a while, and talked about.
Dicky seemed to care nothing at all for the society of the alien residents of the town. He avoided Goodwin, and his escape from the trepanning story of Dr. Gregg is still referred to, in Coralio, as a masterpiece of lightning .
Many letters arrived, addressed to "Mr. Dicky Maloney," or "Señor Dickee 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 for you!
The one mistake Dicky 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 Señor el Coronel Encarnacion Rios, looked upon the little saint seated in the shop and felt his heart go pitapat.
The comandante, who was in all the intricate arts of gallantry, first delicately hinted at his sentiments by donning his dress uniform and up and down fiercely before her window. Pasa, glancing with her saintly eyes, instantly perceived his resemblance to her parrot, Chichi, and was diverted to the extent of a 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 ; she flamed royally; he was charmed to injudicious ; she commanded him to leave the shop; he tried to capture her hand,—and Dicky 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 ............