The Magnificent Pompalone

by T. S. Stribling

 

The Magnificent Pompalone

 

Is the Western World Suffering from the Megalomania of Youth? Sounds Deadly, but It Isn't. Only the Subject is Serious—Not the Treatment

 

By T. S. Stribling

 

CHUM WONG LOO, a copra exporter in Tragarette Road down near the Carnage, told me this story one moonlit night on the savanna in Port au Spain. We were looking at an Italian villa built of Barbados chalk. It arose white, unbelievably white, in the moonlit, and was fronted by an overture of terraced gardens and an arpeggio of palms. It was in process of transformation, Loo told me, with a trace of satire in his voice. A brotherhood of monks had come into possession of it; they were changing the ballroom into a chapel, and already had removed the French landscapes and nudes with which it had been decorated and had replaced them with the fourteen stations done by a local Trinidad negro artist.

We perused this irony for several minutes with our eyes on the pallid villa and the harplike palms which were set with fireflies. Occasionally in front of us would pass Hindu or English or Syrian lovers, whispering together, oblivious, of the night in the more melting wistfulness of their own hearts. As we sat musing, I could see Loo's flat Chinese face smiling in the moonlight with the faint condescension of a man who knows the catastrophe of some friend and is thinking how adroitly he could have avoided it had it happened to him. As this is one of the most pleasing meditations of the human heart, I kept silent, and presently Chum Wong began speaking again and drifted into an account of the man who built the villa, the Magnificent Pompalone.

He told it fragmentally, losing his sequence here and there, abridging lacunæ by moving ahead to the next clear defined incident as men do when recalling a large body of fact. Through it all he preserved the faint satire of his Chinese superiority to the juvenilities of our Western civilization. We were all moonstruck, he said; the Western world suffered from the megalomania of youth. And then he instanced Pompalone. Why should Pompalone, an adventurer and a criminal out of the Orinoco delta, make the mad experiment of storming the careful English circle of Trinidad when he owned several million bolivars whose possession he could not explain?

I did not attempt to elucidate the point. I hold no brief either for the East or the West, or for any of the numberless countries whose nationals have drained into the human olla podrida of Trinidad. I know each country believes in its own heart that it is the finest and greatest of all. If it be a conquering country, its music is major; if it be one of the conquered, its songs are minor; to each singer his song is the sweetest of all.

Wong Loo remained in thought for a minute or two, and presently from some point in his meditation he proceeded:

"No doubt the profoundest surprise the Magnificent Pompalone ever received in his whole surprising life was when not one of his English guests appeared at the opening ball in the Pompalone palace. I say 'not one.' That is incorrect. A few dwellers on the social fringe did appear. Perhaps no one of importance thought it worth while to notify them of the boycott. A Mrs. Spence and her rather plain daughter, Mildred; a Mr. and Mrs. Tenahill and daughter—the Tenahills are manufacturers of rum in a small way down near San Fernando; a Major and a Miss Caroline Blivens—the major owns the bath-houses on Mariquepe beach, and, I believe, exists in a boarding-house—all dwellers of the fringe, with daughters. Just fancy such a handful in that Louis Quinze drawing-room! And even they couldn't stick it out.

"As soon as they realized they were a forlorn hope, they hurried round to Señor Pompalone to make their devoir—they had just dropped in, don't you know, just to see the show—to pay their respects. What a magnificent place, and for a bachelor to live alone in it! And Major Blivens winked a watery eye at the nudes and said it was a good thing Trinidad's climate was always warm—great exhibition of English poise to jest in so anxious a situation—and they got themselves out into their little hired taxis waiting for them in the glare of the huge porte-cochère—they were so desperately afraid they had tumbled out of the fringe by accident. And when one does tumble out of the small and shining circle in Trinidad into the depths of the creams and yellows and chocolates and blacks, one is so irretrievably out, you know."

Chum Wong's almond eyes wrinkled with a faint interrogative smile.

"Well, everybody in Port au Spain knew of the ball. The town is as intimate as a village. The boulevard was full of the motors of wealthy Chinese and Persians and Syrians and Hindus, yellow folk of position who had not been invited; and every one saw them getting away almost surreptitiously.

"The Magnificent Pompalone, however, did not lose his face so easily as his guests. Straight in the teeth of that swarming boulevard, he kept the lights in his villa burning till two o'clock that night. The band played its entire program to the empty ball-room.

"The crowd of negroes who stood outside of the bronze railing peering in across the terraces said they could see the figure of Pompalone passing and repassing against the glare of his great windows, walking up and down, shoulders very erect, marching.

"At two o'clock in the morning he sent the musicians away; the lights blinked out in one room after another in the great white façade until only one dim glow was left high up in the third story, the millionaire's bedroom. Against this glow one negro swore he saw Pompalone's figure standing all night long, looking out over the savanna at the statues on his terraces washed in moonlight, at the old Anglican church with its illuminated clock-dial to the right, at the governor's house to the left, at the commonplace English homes around the boulevard—all simple places possessing not one-twentieth of the magnificence of the white villa, as any one can see—the negro swore that Pompalone stood looking out at them all night long.

 

"I BREAKFASTED with Cesar Pompalone a few mornings afterward. I say 'breakfasted.' I mean I took our Trinidad eleven-o'-clock meal, which is the nearest we get to what you Americans call 'lunch.'

"He sent for me because he knew that we Chinese are the most nearly respectable folk of all the races in Trinidad wearing the livery of the Sun. We are, you might say, the 'demis.' We tread a delicate path. Some of us marry white persons, some colored. We form a sort of link—a connection. Indeed, I have often thought if our first emperor, Han, eight thousand years ago, could have foreseen that his people, the Children of Heaven, would preserve themselves for eight millenniums in order to have the honor of forming a nexus between the black cannibals then gorging themselves on each other's flesh along the Congo and white sea-robbers, fighting and murdering, ravishing and tippling along the Baltic, I have often thought how gratified our first emperor would have been!" Wong Loo smiled and made a faint bow to the moonshine, then proceeded with the curious disconnection that marked his narrative.

"He was a youngish man, thick-necked, short-nosed, heavy-shouldered, with quick, slightly flushed eyes. And he wore his sun-helmet in the breakfast-room. However, the helmet appeared so natural that, for the first fifteen minutes, I really did not observe it. I simply had a feeling that something was wrong, and presently I discovered that Pompalone was wearing his sun-helmet. With it came an impression that at some turn of Pompalone's life he ate and slept and lived ready to fly, attack, resist or evade assault at any moment, and this sun-helmet at the breakfast-table was a kind of left-over from that insecure stage.

"He did not refer to his head-gear, and I certainly did not mention it, but talked of this and that to the short, powerful figure eating in the green-lined helmet.

"Pompalone listened well, and I found him interesting to talk to. About midway in our meal, he interrupted me to ask,

"'I would like to know, Wong Loo, why no one came to my baile.'

"It was a question certainly which I had been expecting all along, and I had my answer pat.

"'As you know, the English are very conservative, Señor Pompalone, and a new arrival like this——'

"'I have had time to build this place—the artist took four months to do those tigers.' He motioned with his swizzle-stick at the ceiling of his breakfast-room, which had a jaguar done in tempera in each of the four corners.

""That's true,' I admitted; 'but four months or fourteen months is a short time for English acquaintance. Now, if you had cast your lot among the French or, better still, the Americans——'

"He looked at me with the slightly wine-shot eyes of the habitual moderate drinker.

"'Wong Loo,' he said briefly, 'I asked you here to tell me why no guests came to my baile.'

"Somehow, Pompalone's look and manner jolted my explanation out of my mind in a most curious fashion, and yet I am not a man easily confused.

""They don't know how you made your millions, Señor Pompalone,' I said awkwardly.

"'No?'

"'And they say—in the clubs—that—you started your fortune on the Orinoco by—by——'

"He nodded me to go on, looking steadily at me.

"'By killing an Englishman.' I moistened my lips with my brandy and soda and spilled a little.

"He nodded.

"'That is correct. On the Kalayo sand-bank; a balata boat had wrecked on it. We did not salve enough rubber to give us both a fortune; so I needed his.'

"'Well—that's why.'

"Pompalone continued staring; then a short, involuntary laugh broke from him.

"'Mio Dios, they do draw fine lines!' He sat toying with the swizzle-stick, smiling and staring.

 

"'WELL,' I said, more at ease, seeing him smile, 'as you know, the English take that sort of thing very seriously, in fact resentfully. Now, if you only had selected a Frenchman or an American or, better still, a Chinese—they don't mind you murdering their brothers——'

"Pompalone laid down the swizzle-stick, rose and began walking up and down the mosaic floor.

"'This may not be a very serious thing, Wong Loo,' he said, drawing down his lips in his queer smile, 'but it is not a thing to joke about, either. Now, here this damned Jerry Weck has bobbed up out of the Orinoco in the clubs of Trinidad, and he's disarranged my whole plans——'

"He stood frowning slightly, with the annoyed look of a man who has been stopped by a tire-puncture.

"'May I ask what were your plans, señor?' I ventured curiously.

"'Certainly,' he said bruskly. There is nothing in my life that I have any need to conceal. I wanted to marry an English girl, a fine-blooded English girl.' He turned and motioned a fist at me with an expository gesture. 'You see, Wong Loo, sudden wealth comes to a man with a question. It asks: What will you do with it? It opens up a hundred avenues, low and high. Will you dig on at your work like a beetle in a dunghill? Will you gamble and drink and play the Lothario? Will you waste your time in the lonely business of traveling for pleasure, and find all the real men in the world too busy to amuse you? Or will you go about the strange adventure of hunting out a great woman and founding a noble family, a memorable line, such as the Rothschilds or the Vanderbilts or the Astors—only, Wong Loo, I would not have my line so cold and mercantile as these. I would select some house back in the Middle Ages with a dash of something vivid in it—the Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent. Only, Wong Loo'—he paused, looking at me and through me—'there is something enormous and African in me, something vast and formidable, like Christophe's fort and palace in Haiti—gigantic—bizarre—tropical.' He stood with the sweat standing out on his face, staring. Presently he flung off his thought, walked to the table, lifted the damask and wiped his face and hands, wrinkling and soiling some square yard or so of the fabric.

 

"FOR some reason, Pompalone took a fancy to me. I was a of little Chinese peg upon which he hung his remarks. I became a kind at friend of the house and also, I must admit, a sort of majordomo. I am fond of the pipe occasionally, the Chinese pipe, I mean, and he allowed me to smoke in his palace, quite out of reach of the police, in a room high up in the fourth story of the villa." Chum Wong pointed through the moonlight. "It had been designed for a nursery and was painted all around with cockatoos and monkeys and dragons, and also with jaguars, all leaping and coursing through a jungle. It was done with a Futurist brilliance of color, and I would lie down on a couch and smoke and watch the cockatoos and dragons and jaguars go round and round, and I thought I was Pompalone sitting on a high throne and all the nations of the earth and all the animals were come to bow and kneel before me. It was terrible what I saw, the little yellow majordomo of the millionaire, lying on a couch in the nursery of his children yet to be."

Chum Wong Loo broke into lisping Chinese laughter and looked up, studying the flat face of the moon, and I had no idea whether he were laughing at himself or at Pompalone, or whether, by chance, at me.

Presently his mirth subsided, and he sat for several minutes brooding; then, with another abrupt dislocation, he pointed toward the mountains that rose up in the moonlight to the west of Port au Spain. Just in front of the mountains lay the dark sweep of the government botanical gardens, and a cluster of lights in this heavy wood represented the governor's palace. By dint of much pointing and directing where to look—over the tip of that palm, just to the right of that kalanga crest, and so, and so, until at last he pointed out the roof and flagstaff of a little observation-point barely visible in the wash of moonlight. He picked up his narrative again with his deplorable lack of coherence.

"She was sitting right up there with a book, a cool, blond girl, with a short blue walking-skirt, and over the end of the rather whittled bench she swung a pleasant curve of filmy blue hosiery and a little blue slipper. She gave Pompalone an impression of a slender bluebell with the dew on it. Against the end of the bench leaned her blue sunshade.

"As Pompalone came up, she quit reading and sat looking at him with her book in her lap and her finger in the book, precisely as if he were the leading figure in some sort of procession which she expected to see come winding out of the enormous tropical trees.

"The man from the Orinoco had never before been looked at so directly by any woman save those of one class, and he had never been regarded so impersonally by any woman in his life.

"It was not Pompalone's intention to entangle himself in an affair with howsoever pleasing a subject. He had come to the English colony with a fixed purpose, and such a course would interfere with it. So he walked on a little past the girl, and then stood with his back to observation-point, looking out over the city in the plain below. Beyond the city lay the harbor, and, westward from the harbor, a sweep of mountainous coast led to the Bocas del Dragones, a group of small islands through which vessels entered the Gulf of Paris from the Caribbean. Beyond the Bocas lay the mountains of Venezuela, rising like smoky amethyst out of an indigo sea.

"As Pompalone looked, a steamship came nosing between the Bocas. The Venezuelan stood watching the entrance when the girl behind him asked if he knew what ship that was.

"It was a casual question. The girl's English was crisper than Trinidad English, and held a faint nasality which Pompalone had never heard before.

"'I don't know, señorita,' he continued, standing and studying the noble scene before him.

"'Do you know whether it is a New York ship or not?'

"'No, señorita.'

"Her questions had been gathering interest slowly, and now she asked, with a distinct bid for personal service, 'Can't you make out the flags on the signal-tower?'

"The man man the Orinoco turned slightly and looked at the girl. She now had her book on her lap and was glancing at it in a leisurely way. She wore a faint smile on lips that were a warm pink rather than red. Her expression showed that she did not know her face was under observation at that moment. The Venezuelan became amused at her light impudence.

"'I can make out the flags, señorita but I don't know what they mean.'

"The girl marked her place and looked up with quite a new expression. 'Oh, I thought you were a native.' The spirit of this utterance was vaguely complimentary and held the sympathy of one fellow traveler for another. 'I'm glad you are not. No matter what country you go to, the natives, as a rule, are inclined to be rather stupid and uninteresting, don't you think?'

"Such a generalization surprised Pompalone into one of his peculiar warped laughs, and he began a swift reconstruction of his ideas about the young lady. He made another attempt to classify her. Her air and remark suggested that he had greatly overestimated her age.

"'I don't know,' he said, with his smile. 'Every one must be a native from somewhere.'

 

SHE glanced away from the topic. 'I suppose you are traveling for some stupid commercial thing. We had an artist on the ship coming down from Guadelupe to Barbados—oh, I thought he was just wonderful! I suppose you find the food at the hotels very trying?'

"'Why, no-o-o,' said Pompalone, utterly at sea between the girl and her piling-up list of questions. 'No; I'm not, and I don't.'

"'Do you mean commercial or underfed?'

"'Why, neither one!'

"'Oh, you're not?'

"'No.'

"'Oh, you don't mean you're an artist, too!'

"She was clearly younger than he had thought.

"'Oh, no; I am no kind of an artist at all.'

"The girl narrowed her blue eyes for a more careful estimate.

"'You don't look like a man in the diplomatic service,' she ventured.

"Her light curiosity pleased Pompalone in an odd way. She had the ingenuous curiosity of a boy, with an unconscious suggestion of cool sweetnesses that belong only to blond women.

"'No,' he said invitingly; 'I am not a diplomat, either—I don't look a diplomat?'

"'Oh, no—no!' Her negative was unflatteringly frank. 'What is your country?'

"'Right over there.' He pointed to the amethyst headland.

"She was illuminated at once.

"'Oh, Venezuela—you're a Venezuelan! Oh, you're a bull-fighter! You look exactly like a bull-fighter!' She clapped her hands and began jiggling delightedly up and down.

"There was something provocative in the ripeness of her childish movement The man from the Orinoco stepped a breath half-way, looking at her.

"'Why, no!' He grew suddenly grave. 'I'm not a bull-fighter, either.'

"She was obviously disappointed. She studied him a moment longer.

"'Then I give you up.'

"'What do you mean by giving me up?'

"'You'll have to tell me what you are. I can't guess.'

"Her assumption that he was a riddle placed there for her entertainment somehow pleased Pompalone. He had never before been in the rôle of entertainer for a woman. He had sought some, he had bought many; but this was an experience delightful and unique.

"'I came over here—' he began, and his voice trailed as he pondered just how to state his mission.

"'Yes—what for?'

"'To pick a wife.'

"The girl came to a momentary stillness; a faint pink came into her face, but she continued looking steadily at him.

"'Now, that is the Spanish flattery in you.' She was clearly disappointed and a little hurt. 'I've read about that in books. They say they never get friends. Instead of being nice and comfy, they slide off into silly compliments. And so there is no real friendship between men and women in South America—' She shook her head sadly, and her blue eyes seemed not far from tears over the great impersonal pathos of such a condition.

"'That was not flattery," said Pompalone dryly; 'it was not even personal. It was a mere statement of fact, señorita.'

"The girl glanced down at her book, then back at Pompalone. In the interval she had recovered from her melancholy over Spanish lack of sincerity between the sexes.

"'Haven't you any girls in Venezuela?' she asked brightly.

"Yes; but I wanted an English girl,' explained Pompalone, with a certain clumsiness of truth.

"'What English girl—here in Port au Spain?'

"'No; an English girl, some English girl.'

"His inquisitor was amazed.

"'Why-y-y?'

"Pompalone hesitated. He did not like to introduce the topic of children to this young lady. He had decided that she was not the woman he had thought her, and now he was exceedingly anxious for his conversation not to offend. He felt as he had felt one day in the Orinoco jungle, as he stood very motionless so as not to frighten a fawn at play. However, she was obviously waiting for him to explain why he wanted to marry an English girl, and he could conjure up no other reason than the real one.

"'Señorita,' he said at last, 'it sounds rather foolish to say it, because, after all'—he stood considering—'after all, a man is but a partner—perhaps not the major partner—indeed, it is a very strange thing, señorita, that we stand here and look up at these trees in the sunlight; they drop their seeds in the ground; young trees grow up, precisely alike, not a flaw's difference; but man'—Pompalone tapped his chest—'although that is the very dearest thing he can set his heart on—it will never be. He can never project his very self through the sunshine of the days yet to come, señorita. There must be a change. His children will look upon the world with other eyes than his, weave other hopes and plans, and all his own fond imaginings, señorita, fade like a mist, and are lost utterly in a burning succession of endless days.'

"The girl stared.

"Whatever are you talking about, Mr.—' She trilled off into a laugh. 'Dear me! Here I am chattering away to a man whose name I don't even know!'

"'Pompalone, señorita.'

"'Pompalone—well, mine's Kelvey—Prudence Kelvey.' She extended a slender white hand and gave the man from the Orinoco a brisk, cordial grip. 'Glad to meet you. Now, what was it you were saying?'

 

"A CERTAIN humor of situation struck Pompalone that he should be shaking hands with a girl in this masculine fashion and telling her what sort of children he wanted. He gave his queer down-drawn smile.

"'I wanted to marry an English girl and found a great family, señorita,' he explained.

"'But why English?' she asked.

"'Because the English seem to cling to one purpose better than other people. Usually it is a small purpose—a bank, perhaps, or a cacao plantation or a ranch, but they cling to it, "what they have they hold;" and all of their small purposes put together make an empire.'

"The bluebell was listening intently now, nodding her blond head thoughtfully.

"'So I thought if I could marry an English girl, señorita, and have by her children holding some immense purpose—a great Latin purpose, held with English tenacity'—the Venezuelan kindled unconsciously at his thought—'why, then I could transmit myself in a great family, señorita. I would found a second House of de' Medici. This heart of mine would beat through centuries'—he struck his chest—'changed, perhaps, but brave and strong and ruthless—I should live!'

"'Why, yes,' defined Miss Kelvey, with frank admiration in her blue eyes; 'that's eugenics. I majored in that.'

"'And I hate death, Señorita! Mio Dios! To be struggling one minute in the water, beating, shrieking, and the next moment a limp sack of hide yourself! Ugh! And yet it is an end every man reaches somehow or another, señorita, unless he finds immortality in brave sons. Unless a fleck of him marches on and on, through centuries——'

"'Oh, that's exactly what Professor Reed said!' cried Miss Prudence, clapping her hands and jiggling again. 'Oh, he was the handsomest man! He was our lecturer in eugenics. "Immortality through our children;" that was what he was always saying. Oh, he was the rage with our senior class! All the girls were just crazy about him. His lectures were so inspiring! And all of us girls meant to do something about it, really, although one of us, Myrtle Shaw, has gone and got married to a grocer, a boy, to my certain knowledge, who never had but one inspiration in all his life, and that was Myrtle——'

"Here the bluebell rippled away in laughter without restraint at Miss Shaw's faux pas, but she indicated by her mirth that she and the rest of the seniors were holding fast to their celibacy in the interest of eugenics.

"Miss Prudence was frankly delighted at meeting a fellow enthusiast in the wilds of Trinidad. She bade Pompalone sit down beside her, and she chattered away about Mendelism and birth-control, and the maternal period, and the time for bearing the strongest children—Miss Kelvey had majored in eugenics.

"Her talk was punctuated with 'Oh's' and sprinkled with quotations from Professor Reed; and her discourse tripped along as if she were some sort of disembodied intelligence which had left the human machinery for this highly experimental science, somewhere back at her college, securely packed in sawdust, which she meant to resurrect whenever she got married and put her theories to the test.

"The man from the Orinoco lost all his moorings. Her amazing chatter sometimes provoked him right to the verge of seizing this provocative delight in his arms, of kissing her cool pink lips violently. What topics she prattled of! The man's heart pounded so that, at every stroke, the girl and the forest and the offing seemed to vibrate. They beat before his eyes in time to the violence in his veins.

"And yet her sheer effervescence, her little 'Oh's' and amazing quotations from Professor Reed, her delighted childish jigglings up and down, her absurd camaraderie, her certitude that Pompalone also had left machinery somewhere packed in sawdust— The man from the Orinoco sat staring and listening and trembling.

"She said she sure wanted to talk to Mr. Pompalone some more, and set an hour to meet him in the same place the next afternoon. She shook hands warmly at parting, and Pompalone weathered his last stone-age impulse. He watched her as she spread her cool blue parasol and walked away on the wobbly heels of her blue slippers. As she passed round a curve in the path that would take her out of sight, she turned and gave him the friendliest smile and a wave of a bit of blue lace and cambric.

"She left Pompalone dazed. He stood bewildered at his own amazing quiescence. The jungle about him exhaled its strong musky perfumes, and the sight of a frond of blue lilylike flowers hanging from a tree almost drove the man mad. As he walked to the savanna through the huge trees, the pulse in his ears throbbed, 'To-morrow—to-morrow—to-morrow.'"

 

CAME a long pause; the copra dealer sat smiling in the moonlight, an unchanging satiric Chinese mask. After a while he continued in a leisurely manner:

"I must admit I never spent so uncomfortable a night as that one following Pompalone's adventure with the blue girl. He rang me up to his great bedroom, and I sat on a white-leather couch, now half asleep, now fully awake, as he strode up and down the crimson carpet and talked or swore or muttered or ordered me to do this or that. At one moment he would say: 'No; this is an end! I won't go back!' At another he would seize my shoulder and order: 'Wong Loo, get the fastest motor-boat in the Port au Spain. I will want to escape to the delta to-morrow—fast! I swear I will, by the Virgin!'

"Ten minutes later he would break out: 'Mio Dios, Wong Loo, such innocence, such purity! I will tell her everything—all about that sand-bank on the Orinoco! How I worked in the flues of hell! How I killed Weck! Why, what good would he have been alive?' he would storm at me. 'He would have swilled his part away in the Caracas brothels. And I needed his part, Wong Loo. I always had it in mind to found a great house, to be a great man!'

"Sweat poured from him. His pajamas clung to the moldings of his back and chest; and then he would break out: 'Oh, damn it! Damn it! She is so cool and blue and slender—' And the veins of his neck were like vines laced round a tree-trunk.

"I must say, sir, when I saw my friend and patron drive his motor to the botanical gardens the next afternoon, I had not the least idea whether by sunset the white villa would have a new mistress or lose a master."

"You see, I really had bought a speed-launch that morning as Pompalone had directed. It lay in the harbor at the foot of the botanical gardens, manned by three St. Kitts niggers—black boys who would risk their necks for Pompalone~or cut his throat, so long as they were paid for the job.

"I took a pair of binoculars and climbed four flights of stairs to the observation-tower that's on top of the villa. I was so nervous I could hardly focus the glasses, sir. And then, when I got them right, the tops of the jungle-trees jumped about so I had a miserable fear that I should never see him at all. And then, suddenly, then he was, right in my field.

 

"HE WAS alone walking up and down before the little observation-point, and I could see him stopping and listening and peering into the jungle. He was continually moistening his lips, taking long breaths and blowing them out.

"All sorts of things went through his mind. He would tell the girl about Weck, about his outlawed palace; he would explain that he came by his wealth partly by craft, partly by oil concessions wrung from the Venezuelan dictator by threats of a revolution, partly by trade, partly by pillage. But he would explain that through it all he had kept the great purpose in view—to found a great family, to breed a great foal from a great dam; and they whom he had robbed were small crawling men without a purpose. And then he would ask her to go with him to the racing motor in the boulevard, ride to the government offices and be married to him. And if she refused— If she refused, he would not repeat the madness of yesterday. He would pick her up bodily, get down through the jungle with her to the speed-boat and the St. Kitts niggers, and he would escape to the delta.

"The thought of picking her up bodily started a kind of burning in Pompalone's veins. And then a strange hue came over his purpose.

"He thought what an absurd thing it was to ask any woman's consent. 'Mio Dios!' he thought. 'Men are molded of iron, huge and strong, and women are weak and soft and slender. And the One Who Knows and Plans All must have meant for men to play the man, instead of going about asking and pleading and begging.

"It was the strangest fancy, but it stuck in Pompalone's head and grew and grew until it seemed to him he was about to commit some sort of outrage against nature to ask the cool blue girl to marry him, to escort her before some mouthing official and have him write and say ceremonies over this tingling intimate matter.

"The thought of picking her up, of gripping her to his breast as he skirted down the jungle to his speed-boat, grew in Pompalone's veins like raw rum. Why, for a million years men had taken their women like that! Only in the last few centuries have they asked them, and talked and explained and argued—like street vendors quibbling over a penny! Oh, it was shameful! There is something quivering with shame when a man asks a woman's consent to marriage! It is a blasphemy toward God!

"And just when Pompalone perceived this strange truth, he heard a rattle of pebbles round the curve in the path. The Orinoco millionaire made three steps and was behind the buttress of a huge ceiba tree. His nerves were like a tuned violin. There flickered through his head the course of his flight through the rank jungle. And the steps came around the turn.

"It was a little negro boy with a letter. It was directed to 'Mr. Pompalone' in the tall, straggling, almost illegible handwriting of an American college-girl. It ran:

 

"Dear Mr. Pompalone:

"I am so sorry I can not keep my appointment with you. I was so interested in you and your high ideals. I was all ready just crazy about Venizweela, and now I am so interested in the Venizweelans. I had no idea they were so up to date and progressive, and in touch with the noblest advances of human science and asperation.

"And I do hope and pray, dear Mr. Pompalone, that you will meet some nobel woman who is worthy to become a mother to the nobel children I know you are sure to produce. With every good wish for the betterment of humanity, I am always your sincere friend, Prudence Kelvey.

 

"P. S.—The ship we saw come in was my ship after all. I sail for New York at nine this morning, or I would certainly be with you when you read these lines. P. K."