11
MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
Glass
In The House of
scarcely a half-breed. My mother was, of course, but----”
“Oh, yes, we’ll grant all that, but it’s the same thing. Your decision will mean a whole future for Tom, and I don’t see how you can refuse him a chance when you have cheated him thus far—not if you care.”
“Oh, I care all right.”
“Will you do the one thing to save him?”
“What is it?” She pulled her gloves nervously back and forth through her closed hands.
“Return to Cuba with Mr. Montego. He will see that you arrive safe and there will be your inheritance to live on. If you ever need money, you may call on me. And in going, leave some kind of a note, saying you are eloping with Montego.”
Rosita leaned back in her chair, half stunned. She had no relatives and Tom had meant so much to her. A wave of hatred passed over her as she looked at his father, but it was true. She had not put Tom to the test, and she doubted whether he would want her even now if he knew. That was why she had not told him. It was her one sling at happiness, and it was over. She thought over her past list of suitors, for there were many, with disgust. Out of them all there was but one, and he was Tom.
But Stanton was repeating his question as though he doubted it.
“You care enough for him to go, don’t you?”
“I will go,” she said.
Elated over a victory that had proved not so difficult as he had anticipated (foreigners were so violent at times) Stanton tried to slip a bill into her hands, but she flew into a rage and crushing it into a little ball, threw it onto the floor and trampled on it. Montego understood and took her arm and conducted her to a taxi in front. He had a feeling, partly of guilt and partly of pity, for this countrywoman whose ancestry he had unwittingly betrayed and whose happiness he had ruined.
“It was my fault,” he confessed. “I could probably have located you without mentioning your ancestors, but the old man didn’t speak up and—-well, all I can say is that I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late now,” she replied, and he held open the taxi door. “I’ll meet you a little before midnight at the station.”
The taxi drove on, but not before Tom Stanton, in swinging past toward the depot, caught the last words. Very suddenly, he changed his mind in regard to leaving on the afternoon train and went home. Rosita was throwing a few articles into a traveling bag when she heard him come in, but she hastily tossed the bag back into a closet and closed the door. As he entered, she went up to him as naturally as possible, her arms outstretched, but he rebuffed her instantly.
“How can you come to me like this ■—as though nothing had happened— come like this when you know you are false?”
“False?” she repeated.
“False!” You can’t deny it, can you ? I saw you in .front of the hotel and I heard you say you’d meet him at midnight.”
“Tom, I------” She paused. She
could not go on, and she wished he had not returned so that she would never have known his mistrust for her and for the fraction of a moment she almost broke her promise.
“Tom, will you always believe that I love you?”
“Along with the rest, yes.”
He watched her turn away and go over to the window. It was their first quarrel—and their last—Rosita mused to herself.
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A Story of Aristocracy, a Family Tree and a Half-Breed
By FLORENCE ESTELLA TAFT
family instead of rushing out of the country and bringing back a foreigner that was part Indian? When society made this discovery, which would disclose itself in time like some hidden skeleton, it would be something never to be lived down—either in that generation or the next. Publicity in almost any other form would be welcome to this scandal—divorce, anything. However, he viewed his son dubiously. Tom’s devotion for Rosita had been so intense that he doubted whether reason would stand the test. He himself must get rid of Rosita and before Tom discovered it. So, Stanton persuaded Tom to go to Westcott that afternoon on business, as it would be less difficult to carry out his plans if he were gone. Then, he secretly phoned Rosita, and she consented to meet him and Montego at the Seymour Hotel.
Montego was waiting when she arrived, and he made himself known to her. “Mrs. Stanton, I believe? I am Alfonso Montego. I suppose your
father-in-law told you----”
“Yes, he said you would be here. There he is now.”
The elder Stanton approached, head high, his cane hanging from one arm.
“What was your name, Mrs. Stanton, before your marriage?” questioned Montego.
“Rosita Garcia,” she replied.
“Rosa Garcia y Roderique?” he said sharply.
Rosita twitched uncomfortably and examined the seams in the fingers of her gloves as though to find perhaps a rip. There was none; the gloves were flawless.
“Rosa Garcia y Roderique?” he repeated and then added something in Spanish.
“Yes,” she admitted, still feeling that possibly Stanton would not know what the latter signified, not being from Havanna, but whatever security she felt in that respect was soon swept away. Stanton went directly to the point.
“Your grandfather, who has just died and from whom you inherit this land, was a South American Indian, was he not?” he fired at her, after he had chosen a secluded corner of the lobby for the conference.
“My grandmother was a white woman.”
“And your grandfother ?”
“An Indian chief.”
“Yes, I thought so,” Stanton went on, with an attempt to curl the mustache that was too short to curl. “I’ll tell you, Rosita, this is going to ruin Tom’? whole life. Does he know about it?”
“No,” she gasped, wtih a little sob, “but I’ll tell him at once.”
“Wait,” Stanton interposed. “Do you want to do something to partially make up for the deceit on your part? Would you be willing to make a sac-rificec to undo, so far as possible, this treachery?”
“It wasn’t treachery. I loved Tom.” “Do you love him enough to give him a chance ? ” went on Stanton while Montego sat silently watching, them.
“I’d be willing to do anything that would benefit him.”
“Well, when this is discovered, it’s ‘goodby Tom’ in business as well as society. No one would hire a lawyer who had a half-breed for a wife.” Rosita winced. She looked down at her creamy-white hands from which she had removed her gloves in her nervousness. No one would ever have thought her a half-breed.”
“You realize, I suppose, that I’m
fonso Montego, a Cuban land agent, came into the offices of Stanton & Son, a firm of conservative lawyers. They dealt solely in wills and mortgages, and their record Was irreproachable. Tom being out, the elder Stanton received him.
“I’m trying to locate a certain Rosa, of the house of Garcia and Roderique.
I understand a member of your family married a girl from Havanna, and I have come to inquire about her.” As Stanton did not answer immediately, Montego went on. He had been searching for nearly a month, and was anxious for the quest to terminate. “This girl has inherited an expanse of land from her grandfather who was a South American Indian and at one time chief of his tribe.”
Stanton rocked backward and forward in his swivel chair and fingered a large, strong-smelling cigar. “My son married a Havanna girl. Her name was Rosita Garcia. Her father was a Spanish nobleman.”
Montego referred to some papers which he held. “Parents both dead,” he read.
Stanton was not certain as to that. The only information he had was that Rosita was the daughter of a nobleman, but as Montega was representing interests on her mother’s side, he had no corresponding data. Montego went on.
“This girl was a dancer, one of the most famous in Cuba.” Montego himself had seen her dance on several occasions for some exclusive entertainments. Did Rosita Garcia dance? Not that Stanton knew of, but he had received a shock which had set all the branches of his family tree a’-quiver. He felt no doubt as to her identity.
“Garcia and Roderique—what does that signify?” he asked.
“Garcia was the family name of her father and Roderique, her mother. So she was of the house of Garcia and Roderique. Her grandfather left his tribe when he married and took the name, Roderique.”
It seemed incomprehensible to Montego that if Stanton was in any way related, he should not know of the great Indian chief. All Havanna knew of him.
“I will investigate this, Mr. Montego, and if you will return this afternoon, I may have some light on the subject.”
Stanton questioned his son.
“Tom, what was Rosita’s name before she married you?”
“Garcia."
“Garcia and Roderique?”
“No, Garcia was all she went by. Why?”
Stanton did not answer immediately:
“She is the daughter of a Spanish nobleman,” he went on for at least the hundredth time.
“And her mother—what about her?”
“Why, her mother was—” A flush of annoyance passed over him. All he could remember was Rosita’s saying, “and my mother was very wealthy and the wife of my father,” and his amused surprise. He did Wish she would be more serious sometimes.
“Her mother was also the daughter of a nobleman,” he finished, feeling that, doubtless, she was.
That convinced the elder Stanton that Rosita was a half-breed. A half-breed in the Stanton family! Stanton never had approved of the marriage. Why couldn’t Tom have allied himself with some old southern
As Tom Stanton turned the fifth page of the evening paper, his glance fell on the heading, “Society News,” and he spoke to his wife who sat opposite him, embroidering with rare excellence on a piece of white linen.
“By the way, Rosita, have you made out the list of guests for our dinner party?” he queried.
Rosita arose and produced a list from her writing desk. She was a small woman of the type called petite. He had met her when in Cuba on a business trip and their love affair had been both spontaneous and intense. He thought, and not without cause, that no beauty and grace in all Cuba could equal that of his little “Cuban rose,” as he called her, for her coloring was of the Spanish type and her manner as capricious as an April day and as fleating as spring.
“I see you have the Whites down,” he remarked, as he looked over the list. “Better strike them off. They’re ‘poor whites.’ ”
Among some of the things that puzzled Rosita was Tom’s New England ancestry (it dated back to Miles Standish and included General Grant) and that, with his aristocratic bearing and the “blue blood” from every branch of the house, for the name, Stanton, represented an ancestry with which but few families in all the south would attempt to compete, only tended to mystify her. He had said “poor whites” and the expression was unfamiliar to Rosita, not versed in American idioms.
“But they aren’t the poor Whites, Tom. They’re the rich ones,” she hastened to explain, with scarcely a foreign accent.
Tom threw aside his paper, crossed the room and laughingly took her in his arms. Her odd little ways, so original, so unique, kept him in a state of continual expectancy.
“Pequeña,” (It was his pet name for her) “what I mean is that the Whites are ‘trash’•—or have been. They have no standing in society, and our inviting them here, regardless of how much we might like them, dear, will unquestionably affect my business as well as my social standing. It may be true they have money now, but it does not alter the fact that they are ‘poor white trash.’ ”
Rosita drew away from him, her black eyes flashing slightly; she was easily perturbed. _	.
“I suppose,” she said, dropping into Spanish in her agitation, “If I’d been a ‘poor white’ instead of the daughter of a nobleman, you’d never have married me.”
“Probably not, Pequeña. A poor -white’ is nearly as bad as a half-breed.” He drew her forcibly back into his arms and kissed her. “But why worry about that ? You’re not, and I did marry you.”
He was thinking of what a delightfully odd little mixture she was, and he took her face between his hands and looked down into her eyes.
“Pequent, you’ve told me your father was a Spanish nobleman, but you’ve never mentioned your mother.
“My mother and father were killed at the same time in----”
“I know, dear, but I mean—was she perhaps the daughter of a nobleman?”
“My father was a poor nobleman
and my mother was------” She paused
a moment and partially released herself from his hold. “My mother was very wealthy and—the wife of my father.” She flashed a side-wise glance at him that was a little dash of coquetry.
“You little fraud!” was all he said and entirely forgot, in his amusement, what his question had been, although he had occasion to rember it with annoyance within less than twenty-four hours.
It was the following day that Al-