The Golden Fleece [7]
present time, even, she might have appeared commonplace. But here she was in conventional costume, with conventional manners. And, just as the nautch-girls, and other Oriental dancers and posturers, wear a costume which suggests nature more effectively than does nature itself, so did Grace's conventionality suggest to Freeman the essential absence of conventionality more forcibly than if he had seen her clad in a turban and translucent caftan, dancing off John the Baptist's head, or driving a nail into that of Sisera. Grace certainly owed much of her importance to her situation, which rendered her foreign and piquante. But, then, everything, in this world, is relative.
Racial types seem to be a failure: when they become very marked, the race deteriorates or vanishes. In the counties of England, after only a thousand years, the women you meet in the rural districts and country towns all look like sisters. The Asiatics, of course, are much more sunk in type than the Anglo- Saxons; and they show us the way we would be going. Only, there is hope in rapid transit and the cosmopolitan spirit, and especially in these United States, which bring together the ends of the earth, and place side by side a descendant of the Puritans like Freeman, and a daughter of Irak-Ajemi.
"What are you coming to California for, Mr. Freeman?"
Freeman had already told her what he had been in the Isthmus for,--to paddle in miasmatic swamps with a view to the possibility of a canal in the remote, speculative future. He had given her a graphic and entertaining picture of the hideous and inconceivable life he had led there for six months, from which he had emerged the only member of a party of nineteen (whites, blacks, and yellows) who was not either dead by disease, by violence, or by misadventure, or had barely escaped with life and a shattered constitution. Freeman, after emerging from the miasmatic hell and lake of Gehenna, had taken a succession of baths, with soap and friction, had been attended by a barber and a tailor, and had himself attended the best table to be found for love or money in the charming town of Panama. He had also spent more than half of the week of his sojourn there in sleep; and he was now in the best possible condition, physical and mental, --though not, he admitted, pecuniary. As to morals, they had not reached that discussion yet. But, in all that he did say, Freeman exhibited perfect unreserve and frankness, answering without hesitation or embarrassment any question she chose to ask (and she asked some curious ones).
But when she asked him such an innocent thing as what he was after in California--an inquiry, by the way, put more in idleness than out of curiosity--Freeman stroked his yellow moustache with the thumb of the hand that held his Cuban cigarette, gazed with narrowed eyelids at the horizon, and for some time made no reply at all. Finally he said that California was a place he had never visited, and that it would be a pity to have been so near it and yet not have improved the opportunity of taking a look at it.
Grace instantly scented a mystery, and was not less promptly resolved to fathom it. And what must be the nature of a mystery attaching to a handsome man, unmarried, and evidently no stranger to the gentler sex? Of course there must be a woman in it! Her eyes glowed with azure fire.
"You have some acquaintances in California, I suppose?" she said, with an air of laborious indifference.
"Well,--yes; I believe I have," Freeman admitted.
"Have they lived there long?"
"No; not over a few months. I accidentally heard from a person in Panama. I dropped a line to say I might turn up."
"She----you haven't had time to get an answer, then?"
Freeman inhaled a deep breath through his cigarette, tilted his head back, and allowed the smoke to escape slowly through his nostrils. In this manner, familiar to his deep-designing sex, he concealed a smile. Grace was, in some respects, as transparent as she was subtle. So long as the matter in hand did not touch her emotions,
Racial types seem to be a failure: when they become very marked, the race deteriorates or vanishes. In the counties of England, after only a thousand years, the women you meet in the rural districts and country towns all look like sisters. The Asiatics, of course, are much more sunk in type than the Anglo- Saxons; and they show us the way we would be going. Only, there is hope in rapid transit and the cosmopolitan spirit, and especially in these United States, which bring together the ends of the earth, and place side by side a descendant of the Puritans like Freeman, and a daughter of Irak-Ajemi.
"What are you coming to California for, Mr. Freeman?"
Freeman had already told her what he had been in the Isthmus for,--to paddle in miasmatic swamps with a view to the possibility of a canal in the remote, speculative future. He had given her a graphic and entertaining picture of the hideous and inconceivable life he had led there for six months, from which he had emerged the only member of a party of nineteen (whites, blacks, and yellows) who was not either dead by disease, by violence, or by misadventure, or had barely escaped with life and a shattered constitution. Freeman, after emerging from the miasmatic hell and lake of Gehenna, had taken a succession of baths, with soap and friction, had been attended by a barber and a tailor, and had himself attended the best table to be found for love or money in the charming town of Panama. He had also spent more than half of the week of his sojourn there in sleep; and he was now in the best possible condition, physical and mental, --though not, he admitted, pecuniary. As to morals, they had not reached that discussion yet. But, in all that he did say, Freeman exhibited perfect unreserve and frankness, answering without hesitation or embarrassment any question she chose to ask (and she asked some curious ones).
But when she asked him such an innocent thing as what he was after in California--an inquiry, by the way, put more in idleness than out of curiosity--Freeman stroked his yellow moustache with the thumb of the hand that held his Cuban cigarette, gazed with narrowed eyelids at the horizon, and for some time made no reply at all. Finally he said that California was a place he had never visited, and that it would be a pity to have been so near it and yet not have improved the opportunity of taking a look at it.
Grace instantly scented a mystery, and was not less promptly resolved to fathom it. And what must be the nature of a mystery attaching to a handsome man, unmarried, and evidently no stranger to the gentler sex? Of course there must be a woman in it! Her eyes glowed with azure fire.
"You have some acquaintances in California, I suppose?" she said, with an air of laborious indifference.
"Well,--yes; I believe I have," Freeman admitted.
"Have they lived there long?"
"No; not over a few months. I accidentally heard from a person in Panama. I dropped a line to say I might turn up."
"She----you haven't had time to get an answer, then?"
Freeman inhaled a deep breath through his cigarette, tilted his head back, and allowed the smoke to escape slowly through his nostrils. In this manner, familiar to his deep-designing sex, he concealed a smile. Grace was, in some respects, as transparent as she was subtle. So long as the matter in hand did not touch her emotions,