CHAPTER XVII.

THE BOLERO DANCER WITH THE GYPSY BLOOD.

Porto Rico as a territory of the progressive American republic will soon be transformed--while advancing with giant strides along the material road that may lead to statehood, the island must gradually lose those picturesque and distinctly national features that have marked Spanish rule for centuries.

Never again will San Juan be the same gay, careless, pleasure seeking capital of the past--the business loving, bustling Yankee shopkeeper banishes such folly, or at best makes it play second fiddle to his trading.

San Juan will be swept and garnished, her streets paved, her narrowest _calles_ lighted, and within a few years she may vie even with Boston in regard to the conditions that make life worth living to the average American.

But the halo of romance and the worship of military heroes that has been her portion during these long centuries--alas! they have fled, to return no more.

Many will sigh as they raise the curtain of the past, and take one more peep at the gay bright scene stamped upon memory's tablets.

There is a peculiar fascination about Spanish and Oriental cities, a barbaric splendor that attracts the eye, even while our common sense tells us of its tawdry nature.

Many have described the San Juan of the past, and as a picture that has been turned to the wall, let us for the last time see the Porto Rican capital through the glasses of a clever newspaperman, whose pen paints its colors just as might the faithful camera. This was as Roderic saw it the day after his safe entry into the town:

San Juan wakes early.

By seven o'clock the shops are open, and a stirring of wide shutters in the upper stories of the houses shows that even the women are about. Hundreds of men are having their coffee in the _cafés_. Probably a band is playing somewhere, which means a detachment of troops returning from early mass in the Cathedral.

By ten o'clock this early activity has worn itself out. The sun has got well up into the sky, white and hot. It falls in the narrow, unshaded streets, and the cobblestones begin to scorch through thin shoe soles. It is a time to seek the shade and quaff cooling drinks. Business languishes. About eleven shop shutters begin to go up, and soon the streets are as deserted as at midnight.

This is breakfast hour, and until well after noon not a shop or public building will be found open. About one or two, whether the _siesta_ is long or short, people begin to reappear and the shops reopen. Gradually traffic revives. By four o'clock, when the Palais de Justice has cast its cooling shadow over half the blazing plaza, loungers begin to appear to occupy the numerous benches and blink idly at the guards about the gloomy Palais entrance. With each passing hour the city presents a livelier appearance, until at six o'clock it is fully awake and ready for dinner, the principal meal of the day.

In the evening is when the inhabitants of San Juan really live. These are the pleasant hours of the day. From the sea comes a breeze, cool and fresh, to whisper to the few shade trees in the plazas and revive enervated humanity. Twice a week one of the military bands plays in the principal plaza. Then it is worth while to go, hire a comfortable arm chair from a _muchacho_ for ten _centavos_ in Puerto Rican silver and sit and observe and listen.

These military bands--there are three stationed in San Juan--are equal to Sousa or Herbert on a considerably smaller scale. They play beautifully voluptuous airs of sunny Spain, the strains swelling and quickening until they entice an answer in the livened step and unconsciously swaying bodies of hundreds of promenaders; then slowly dying to a sweet, soft breath, borne to the ear from distant guitars and mandolins. Italian, French and German composers are not neglected, while occasionally there will come a spirited bit from some modern light opera, or even a snatch from a topical song of the day.

On band nights San Juan may be seen at her best. The concerts begin at eight o'clock. Prior to that hour the private soldiers are permitted the liberty of the plaza, and hundreds avail themselves of the opportunity for an airing. At eight they must retire to their barracks, leaving the plaza to the officers.

The music racks are set at one end of the plaza, and the musicians stand during the two hours of the concert. By the time the second number on the programme is reached the plaza is thronged with the wealth, beauty and fashion of the Puerto Rican capital. A row of gas street lamps, thickly set, encircles the Plaza, while at each end rise iron towers, upon which are supported electric arc lights.

All the houses surrounding the plaza are illuminated, their bright coloring and Eastern architecture giving an Oriental effect. The balconies--every house has a balcony--are filled with gaily dressed women and officers, and through open windows glimpses of richly furnished interiors can be obtained. On the street level, the Grand Central and other _cafés_, the Spanish Club and a dozen brilliantly lighted drug stores and shops help flood the plaza with light and lend life and gayety to the scene.

The throng is characteristic of San Juan of to-day--of the San Juan which will soon cease to exist. There are Spanish officers, hundreds of them, clad in an immense variety of uniform--to use a perfectly truthful paradox.

There are officers of the Guardia Civil, in dark blue suits and caps, their cuffs red and gold, the rank indicated by eight pointed stars, and with small spurs sticking out from under the long trousers.

There are officers of the line, usually in light or indigo blue, sometimes with broad stripes along the trousers and with cuffs and facings of green, red, blue or black, according to the branch of the service, their rank indicated by gold and silver stars on the sleeve above the cuff. These wear tall white caps, with gilt bands. There are naval officers, in dark blue uniforms of distinctly seafaring cut and without colored facings.

All the officers wear some kind of sword invariably, usually during the day the regulation sabre, and at night substituting a slender rapier with a cross hilt. They also carry walking sticks with silver and gold heads, according to rank.

As they mingle with the crowd, walking together in groups, now bowing to some passing female acquaintance or turning to promenade with her, they unconsciously dominate the entire assemblage and give to it an indelible imprint of Spain. Plainly they are favorites with the women, who receive their polite attentions graciously.

And the women. They are out in force, dressed in the latest fashions of Madrid and Paris. Here and there some gentleman walks with his wife and family, but usually the women promenade alone until joined by male acquaintances. A group of girls will be accompanied by a duenna, who keeps discreetly in the background if any men approach. Often, however, two or more senoritas will promenade entirely alone, with a freedom which would be considered unbecoming in the United States.

This is one of the occasions when rigorous Spanish etiquette is somewhat relaxed and the unmarried women enjoy a fleeting glimpse of social freedom. So the crowd, constantly swelling, until progress is almost impossible, moves in a circle back and forth along the length of the plaza. Mingling with it are scores of police, in their bright uniforms, who seem to have no business there except to accentuate the crush, and hundreds of civilians in their best dress. And so it goes, until the concert ends. The band, preceded by an escort of cavalry, marches away to a wonderfully quick quickstep, the lights fade and slowly the crowd disperses through the shadowy streets.

Not all San Juan, however, is to be seen in the grand plaza. Only fashionable and official life centralizes there. In other sections of the city the evenings pass differently. Take a stroll from the brilliantly lighted plaza into the eastern part of the town, near the barracks.

There the whole lower strata will be found in the narrow, badly lighted streets, or in the plaza Cristobal Colon and the smaller breathing places of the densely populated city.

Here hand organs and dirty wandering minstrels, who perform semi-barbaric music upon cracked guitars and raspy mandolins, accompanied by the "guero"--a native instrument made of a gourd--furnish the music.

Venders of _dulce_ squat beside their trays of sweetmeat, dolorously crying their wares. Non-commissioned officers and privates mingle with the people and chat with the women. Everybody smokes cigarettes, even children hardly able to toddle. The shops and meaner _cafés_ are open and crowded.

Further no one can wander through streets more narrow and darker than alleys to where the massive gray battlements of the ancient city walls lift their sombre, jagged towers to greet the moon.

Inquisitive sentinels, Mauser rifle in hand, walk here to turn intruders back, but by exercising discretion glimpses may be obtained of tiny balconies ensconced in nooks and crannies high up in the wall and overlooking the sea and the twinkling city. Perhaps a peep may be had into the odd habitations within, with dusky senoritas gazing out through a curtain of flowers and vines. This is a different San Juan from that which promenades in the plaza: but not less interesting.

All this Roderic Owen saw, nor was it the first time he had wandered through the streets and byways of the strange old city.

How vividly these scenes brought back to his mind the days and nights of the past, when he had lived in a glow of love's young dream--still, why need he sigh--the experience through which he had passed, bitter though it had been, must have taught him a lesson, and since Love had again taken up an abode in his heart, he could profit by it to forever debar the little demon Jealousy from entering this holiest of holies.

He wandered over the whole city.

He even found means to enter some of the forts that frowned so ferociously, and yet were but hollow mockeries, mounting few modern guns.

Here were evidences still of the damage inflicted by Sampson's fleet many weeks before--Spanish dilatory tactics had allowed dismounted guns to lie where they had fallen, and Roderic was of the opinion that it must have been rather warm around those regions at the time.

There was something of a bustle of preparation in the city, since it had become known that General Miles and an American army had landed on the south shore of the island.

Still the Spaniards did not expect to make a desperate resistance like Blanco had declared Havana would show.

When the Yankee army reached San Juan and the terrible battle ships appeared again in the offing doubtless they would gracefully submit to the inevitable and yield up their arms.

Meanwhile there was the usual bluster and braggadocio as to what they meant to do with the Yankee pigs once they were induced to enter the trap which the Spanish commander had so cunningly spread.

They would be extravagantly comical, these bold soldiers of Spain, if they were not so very serious in what they declared.

Roderic laughed in his sleeve at the awful threats so openly made in street and cafe, wherever two or more soldiers came together--in imagination he pictured the overwhelming rush of regulars and volunteers in blue, just as they had gone into the Spaniards at Caney and San Juan hill--one such mad swoop and he was ready to swear to it that the Porto Rican capital would be carried.

Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast a better.

Roderic did not use his whole time in tramping about the city.

He made several visits to people who had been in communication with the Washington authorities, influential English residents or even native Porto Ricans who knew what was written by Destiny upon the wall, and longed for the blessed day to dawn when Liberty would descend upon the sons and daughters of the Antilles.

His object was not to get information concerning the resources of the garrison.

All those points he was able to pick up for himself in his round of the city and forts.

As a government official he had come to San Juan, and it was in this capacity he conferred with these influential citizens.

When he had finally accomplished all that was expected of him in this direction, Roderic threw off the burden of responsibility.

He was now free to think once more of his own personal affairs, to let the vision of Georgia's lovely face occupy his mind as it had his heart.

How he longed to see her.

How fitting it seemed that the romance of his life, that had obtained its first lease in San Juan, should complete the circuit there, amid these well remembered scenes.

It was concert night.

Even with a hostile army marching against the capital these Spanish soldiers, who, as old campaigners laughed at fate, did not mean to be cheated out of their usual pleasure.

Among the throngs on the plaza Roderic sauntered, looking eagerly for the face his heart yearned to see.

Some few discreet people had left the capital and gone away, pending the anticipated bombardment; but the grand rush of panic stricken fugitives would not begin until the first shell from the Yankee fleet came screaming into town.

It had been so on the previous occasion, and those who for five hours that morning saw the steady, jostling, excited, almost demoralized stream of humanity that poured along the one road leading out of San Juan, many carrying their most cherished household possessions upon their backs, would never forget the remarkable spectacle.

Roderic's search was however, not without some result, for he had several glimpses of his cousin Cleo in the crowd.

She hung upon the arm of Captain Beven, and Miss Becky was of course along.

Having heard so much of the gaiety to be found in Porto Rico's capital the ladies had had curiosity enough to come ashore.

Who could blame them, when listening to the delightful strains of melody, and amid such enchanting and romantic surroundings as the many tinted houses fronting the grand plaza afforded!

Not Roderic, surely.

He thought it wise not to make his presence known, as it might seriously compromise his safety in this hostile city.

Nevertheless his eyes were frequently drawn toward the trio, and somehow rested upon the face of his Virginia cousin with a peculiar satisfaction.

If Cleo was not divinely handsome like Georgia she had a fine figure and carried her head like an American queen, so that any man might feel proud to claim kinship with her.

Roderic noticed how eagerly she looked around.

At first he had the assurance to wonder whether she could be seeking him in the crowd, and man-like was beginning to even feel flattered at the idea when he noticed that those whom she scrutinized so eagerly were of the gentler sex, wives and daughters of San Juan's better class of citizens.

Then it flashed upon him that she hoped to discover Georgia in the midst of the throng.

He dared not follow out this thought to its legitimate conclusion, lest it make him appear egotistical even in his own eyes.

That Georgia must have reached the city he knew full well, for with his own eyes he had seen the Sterling Castle in the harbor.

If that were not evidence quite sufficient here was Jerome as big as life, sauntering about the plaza, the object of adoration on the part of the whole female population, and of malice, envy and black hatred on the part of the military beaux who saw in this Adonis a rival to be feared.

Roderic mentally pictured the inevitable outcome and in anticipation enjoyed Jerome's downfall.

"He will discover it a different matter flirting with the daughters of Porto Rico. I am ready to swear my dandy Lord High Admiral will ere long find himself ducked in some fragrant frog pond, if no greater evil befalls him," was what Owen concluded.

Nor was he a particle sorry, since Jerome had long played the heartless role of an adventurer, and many had suffered because of his belief that the world owed him a living.

The evening wore on, and Roderic began to imagine he was doomed to disappointment.

Lovely faces he had seen, but not the one for which his heart yearned.

Some of the ladies wore veils, their exceeding modesty preventing them from showing their faces in such a mixed assemblage, a custom that undoubtedly descended from royal blood desirous of being distinguished from the plebeian.

Still Roderic had full assurance that his eyes could discover the girl he loved, even though she stood among a score of veiled companions--there is an individuality in the carriage, little peculiarities about the movement of hands and head that appeal to the keen eye of Love, and cannot be mistaken.

So Roderic, wise man, reasoned, as with a single glance he decided that this one or that was not Georgia.

So others of his sex have decided in times past, and mayhap paid the penalty of their folly.

As the secret agent was cruising around that side of the plaza where the band had taken up its quarters, while making a last selection, he received a shock without the least warning by suddenly coming face to face with a dashing looking Spaniard whose gay dress proclaimed him some public performer.

Roderic gritted his teeth at sight of his yellow skinned adversary of the past, for this was no other than Julio, the handsome dancer of the _bolero_, a man whose life had been one long succession of conquests in the arena of Love, and over whom half the town had at times gone wild.

He had _gitano_ or gypsy blood in his veins, through his mother, which doubtless accounted in a measure for the _diablerie_ of his appearance, and his success among the fair sex, for there is to many women a fascination in anything bordering upon the tempestuous, the wild and eerie.

It was only natural that Roderic, coming thus upon the man he had hated so bitterly in the past, should grind his teeth and feel a mad desire to plant his fist square between those black dare devil eyes that had wrought such accursed mischief for years back.

Then he remembered that it was all a mistake--that he had no valid reason for assaulting the idol of San Juan save in the capacity of a general defender of the weaker sex, a modern Don Quixote, and that would hardly be politic.

Drawn by an attraction he could never explain, he sauntered after the _bolero_ dancer, who had evidently come out of some casino near by, after his performance was done, in order to enjoy the music of the military band--come out without changing his garments, which gave him the picturesque swagger so admired among those of his blood; and the red silk sash that was knotted at his left hip, the ends trailing almost to the knee, did not Roderic remember it well, and had he not once vowed to some day use the same in strangling the gipsy dancer with the devilish handsome face?

Pshaw! that was long ago, when he was a poor fool, whom love had made insane.

Now he had learned his lesson well, and never again would he allow such miserable suspicions to find lodgment in his breast.

Georgia was as faithful as the stars, and the only reason he felt a little bitterness toward this fellow was in sympathy with the past.

As to jealousy, thank Heaven that evil weed had been forever plucked out by the roots from the garden of his heart, and--

But there was Julio, up to his old tricks, flirting with one of Eve's daughters.

Roderic, still remembering the past, found himself indulging in a wild hope that some indignant lover would set upon the gypsy dancer and give him a taste of Spanish vengeance.

Such however, did not happen.

The girl who had answered his signal with a wave of her snowy kerchief soon joined him, and together they pushed through the crowd as though heading for a street that broke away from the plaza.

Roderic had been close at hand, and his eyes were not closed--indeed, just about this time they seemed to be unusually wide open, as though a sudden avalanche of jealousy had swept over him.

It was not because the companion of Julio was veiled that he watched her so eagerly, so breathlessly--other women wore mantillas, and chose to conceal their patrician faces from the common herd when walking the plaza.

What then?

Love is not blind--Roderic had just now been declaring to himself that he would easily be able to pick Georgia out from among a score of girls whose features were hidden from view--and it was on this very account that he shook from head to foot as though with the palsy.

Dead--that old demon Jealousy once planted in the human breast is hard indeed to slay.

And Roderic again ground his teeth in fury, and followed in the wake of Julio the _bolero_ dancer of San Juan because this veiled senorita who took his arm and clung so confidingly there as they dodged through the crowd had apparently the familiar figure and actions of the girl he loved, the girl he had once jilted on account of this self same Spanish heart smasher--Georgia de Brabant, maid of San Juan!