Part 12 (2/2)

A white line of surf-foam ran along all the edge of the bay. Languorous Aphrodite of the cities of the world, Rio de Janeiro lay naked beyond that line, and gloried. Like a dream of fair woman, her feet plunged in foam, her body reclining against the heights, her arms outstretched, green hills for her pillows, her diadem the s.h.i.+ning mountain-peaks, queen of the cities of the earth by the gift of Almighty G.o.d, she gleamed beneath the kiss of dawn.

Leighton drew a long, long breath.

”It will take a lot of bad smells to blot the memory of _that_,” he said.

They came to the bad smells in about an hour and a quarter. An hour later they left the custom-house. Then, each in a rocketing tilbury, driven by a yelling Jehu, they shot through the narrow and filthy streets of the Rio of that far day and drew up, still trembling with fright, at the doors of the Hotel dos Estrangeiros.

”You got here, too!” cried Leighton as Lewis tumbled out of his cab. ”We had both wheels on the ground at once three separate times. How about you?”

”I really don't know anything about what happened, sir,” said Lewis, grinning. ”I was holding on.”

”What were they yelling? Did you make anything out of that?” asked Leighton, when they had surveyed their rooms and were was.h.i.+ng.

”They were shouting at the people in the way,” said Lewis. ”My driver yelled only two things. When a colored person was in the way, it was, 'Melt chocolate-drop!' and when he shouted at a white man, it was: 'Clear the way to h.e.l.l! a foreigner rides with me.'”

”Boy,” said Leighton, speaking through several folds of towel and the open connecting-door, ”if you ever find your brains running to seed, get a job as a cabman. There's something about a cab, the world over, that breeds wit.”

CHAPTER XVI

The Rio of 1888 was seething at the vortex of the wordy battle for emanc.i.p.ation. The Ouvidor, the smart street of the town, so narrow that carriages were not allowed upon it, was the center of the maelstrom.

Here crowded politician and planter; lawyers, journalists, and students; conservative and emanc.i.p.ationist.

At each end of the Ouvidor were squares where daily meetings were held the emotional surge of which threatened to lap over into revolution at any moment.

The emotion was real. Youths of twenty blossomed into verse never equaled before or since in the writings of their prolific race. An orator, maddened by the limits of verbal expression, shot himself through the heart to add a fitting period to a thundered phrase. Women forgot their own bondage, and stripped themselves of jewels for the cause.

Leighton and his son, wandering through these scenes, felt like ghosts.

They had the certainty that all this had happened before. Their lonely, calm faces drew upon them hostile, wondering stares.

”Got a clean tablet in your mind?” asked Leighton one day as they emerged from an unusually excited scene. ”Write this down: Nothing bores one like somebody else's belated emotions. When you've had some woman insist on kissing you after you're tired of her, you'll understand me better. In the meantime, this is bad enough. I can think of only one cure for what we've been through here, and that is a Sunday in London.

Let us start.”

”London!” breathed Lewis. ”Are we going to London?”

”Yes, we are. It's a peculiar fact, well known and long cursed among travelers, that all the steamers in the world arrive in England on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. We'll get to London for Sunday.”

During the long voyage, for the first time since the day on which he met the stranger, and which already seemed of long ago, Lewis had time to think. A sadness settled on him. What were they doing at Nadir on this starry night? Were the goats corraled? Who had brought them in? Was mammy crooning songs of low-swinging chariots and golden stairs? Was Mrs. Leighton still patiently sewing? The Reverend Orme, was he still sitting scowling and staring and staring? And Natalie? Was she there, or was she gone, married? He drew a great, quivering sigh.

Leighton looked around.

”Trying to pick up a side-tracked car?”

Lewis smiled faintly, but understandingly.

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