New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
That evening Dicky’s name was called by the sentry, and he stepped
before the bars of the door. There stood his little saint, a black
mantilla draped about her head and shoulders, her face like glorified
melancholy, her clear eyes gazing longingly at him as if they might
draw him between the bars to her. She brought a chicken, some oranges,
_dulces_ and a loaf of white bread. A soldier inspected the food, and
passed it in to Dicky. Pasa spoke calmly, as she always did, briefly,
in her thrilling, flute-like tones. “Angel of my life,” she said, “let
it not be long that thou art away from me. Thou knowest that life is
not a thing to be endured with thou not at my side. Tell me if I can do
aught in this matter. If not, I will wait—a little while. I come again
in the morning.”
Dicky, with his shoes removed so as not to disturb his fellow
prisoners, tramped the floor of the jail half the night condemning his
lack of money and the cause of it—whatever that might have been. He
knew very well that money would have bought his release at once.
For two days succeeding Pasa came at the appointed times and brought
him food. He eagerly inquired each time if a letter or package had come
for him, and she mournfully shook her head.
On the morning of the third day she brought only a small loaf of bread.
There were dark circles under her eyes. She seemed as calm as ever.
“By jingo,” said Dicky, who seemed to speak in English or Spanish as
the whim seized him, “this is dry provender, _muchachita_. Is this the
best you can dig up for a fellow?”
Pasa looked at him as a mother looks at a beloved but capricious babe.
“Think better of it,” she said, in a low voice; “since for the next
meal there will be nothing. The last _centavo_ is spent.” She pressed
closer against the grating.
“Sell the goods in the shop—take anything for them.”
“Have I not tried? Did I not offer them for one-tenth their cost? Not
even one _peso_ would any one give. There is not one _real_ in this
town to assist Dickee Malonee.”
Dick clenched his teeth grimly. “That’s the _comandante_,” he growled.
“He’s responsible for that sentiment. Wait, oh, wait till the cards are
all out.”
Pasa lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “And, listen, heart of my
heart,” she said, “I have endeavoured to be brave, but I cannot live
without thee. Three days now—”
Dicky caught a faint gleam of steel from the folds of her mantilla. For
once she looked in his face and saw it without a smile, stern, menacing
and purposeful. Then he suddenly raised his hand and his smile came
back like a gleam of sunshine. The hoarse signal of an incoming
steamer’s siren sounded in the harbour. Dicky called to the sentry who
was pacing before the door: “What steamer comes?”
“The _Catarina_.”
“Of the Vesuvius line?”
“Without doubt, of that line.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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