Cabbages and Kings | Page 4

Guilbert, you will be told, married Senor Goodwin
one month after the president's death, thus, in the very moment when
Fortune had ceased to smile, wresting from her a gift greater than the
prize withdrawn.
Of the American, Don Frank Goodwin, and of his wife the natives have
nothing but good to say. Don Frank has lived among them for years,
and has compelled their respect. His lady is easily queen of what social
life the sober coast affords. The wife of the governor of the district,
herself, who was of the proud Castilian family of Monteleon y
Dolorosa de los Santos y Mendez, feels honored to unfold her napkin
with olive-hued, ringed hands at the table of Senora Goodwin. Were
you to refer (with your northern prejudices) to the vivacious past of
Mrs. Goodwin when her audacious and gleeful abandon in light opera
captured the mature president's fancy, or to her share in that statesman's
downfall and malfeasance, the Latin shrug of the shoulder would be
your only answer and rebuttal. What prejudices there were in Coralio
concerning Senora Goodwin seemed now to be in her favor, whatever
they had been in the past.
It would seem that the story is ended, instead of begun; that the close of
tragedy and the climax of a romance have covered the ground of
interest; but, to the more curious reader it shall be some slight
instruction to trace the close threads that underlie the ingenious web of
circumstances.
The headpiece bearing the name of President Miraflores is daily
scrubbed with soap-bark and sand. An old half-breed Indian tends the
grave with fidelity and the dawdling minuteness of inherited sloth. He
chops down the weeds and ever-springing grass with his machete, he
plucks ants and scorpions and beetles from it with his horny fingers,
and sprinkles its turf with water from the plaza fountain. There is no
grave anywhere so well kept and ordered.
Only by following out the underlying threads will it be made clear why
the old Indian, Galves, is secretly paid to keep green the grave of
President Miraflores by one who never saw that unfortunate statesman

in life or in death, and why that one was wont to walk in the twilight,
casting from a distance looks of gentle sadness upon that unhonored
mound.
Elsewhere than at Coralio one learns of the impetuous career of Isabel
Guilbert. New Orleans gave her birth and the mingled French and
Spanish creole nature that tinctured her life with such turbulence and
warmth. She had little education, but a knowledge of men and motives
that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the common woman
was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for the pursuit of
adventure to the brink of danger, and with desire for the pleasures of
life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb; she was Eve after the
fall, but before the bitterness of it was felt. She wore life as a rose in
her bosom.
Of the legion of men who had been at her feet it was said that but one
was so fortunate as to engage her fancy. To President Miraflores, the
brilliant but unstable ruler of Anchuria, she yielded the key to her
resolute heart. How, then, do we find her (as the Coralians would have
told you) the wife of Frank Goodwin, and happily living a life of dull
and dreamy inaction?
The underlying threads reach far, stretching across the sea. Following
them out it will be made plain why "Shorty" O'Day, of the Columbia
Detective Agency, resigned his position. And, for a lighter pastime, it
shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus beneath the
tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now to cause
laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowing crags where
formerly rang the cries of pirate's victims; to lay aside pike and cutlass
and attack with quip and jollity; to draw one saving titter of mirth from
the rusty casque of Romance--this were pleasant to do in the shade of
the lemon-trees on that coast that is curved like lips set for smiling.
For there are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That segment of continent
washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the sea a
formidable border of tropicle jungle topped by the overweening
Cordilleras, is still begirt by mystery and romance. In past times,
buccaneers and revolutionists roused the echoes of its cliffs, and the

condor wheeled perpetually above where, in the green groves, they
made food for him with their matchlocks and toledos. Taken and
retaken by sea rovers, by adverse powers and by sudden uprising of
rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has
scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly