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 ***?
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 ***, 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, she had no difficulty in maintaining a deceptive surface; but emotion she could not disguise, though she was probably not aware of the fact; for emotion has a tendency to shut one's own eyes and open what they can no longer see in one's self to the gaze of outsiders.
"No," he said, when he had recovered his composure. "But that won't make any difference. We are on rather intimate terms, you see."
"Oh! Is it long since you have met?"
"Pretty long; at least it seems so to me."
Grace turned, and looked full at her companion. He did not meet her glance, but kept his profile steadily opposed, and went on smoking with a dreamy air, as if lost in memories and anticipations, sad, yet sweet.
"Really, Mr. Freeman, I hardly thought --you have always seemed to care so little about anything--I didn't suspect you of so much sentiment."
"I am like other men," he returned, with a sigh. "My affections are not given indiscriminately; but when they are given,--you understand,--I----"
"Oh, I understand: pray don't think it necessary to explain. I'm sure I'm very far from wishing to listen to confidences about another,--to----"
"Yes, but I like to talk about it," interposed Freeman, earnestly. "I haven't had a chance to open my heart, you know, for at least six months. And though you and I haven't known each other long, I believe you to be capable of appreciating what a man feels when he is on his way to meet some one who----"
"Thank you! You are most considerate!
But I shall be additionally obliged if you would tell me in what respect I can have so far forgotten myself as to lead you to think me likely to appreciate anything of the kind. I assure you, Mr. Freeman, I have never cared for any one; and nothing I have seen since I left home makes it probable that I shall begin now."
"I am sorry to hear that," said Freeman, slowly drawing another cigarette out of his bundle, and beginning to re-roll it with a dejected air.
"Indeed!"
"Yes: the fact is, I had hoped that you had begun to have a little friendly feeling for me. I am more than ready to reciprocate."
"I hope you will spare me any insults, sir. I have no one to protect me, but----"
