第8章

The story of the events which led up to the coming, on this December night, of a "half-breed" grandson to the Snow homestead, was an old story in South Harniss.The date of its beginning was as far back as the year 1892.

In the fall of that year Captain Zelotes Snow was in Savannah.

He was in command of the coasting schooner Olive S.and the said schooner was then discharging a general cargo, preparatory to loading with rice and cotton for Philadelphia.With the captain in Savannah was his only daughter, Jane Olivia, age a scant eighteen, pretty, charming, romantic and head over heels in love with a handsome baritone then singing in a popular-priced grand opera company.It was because of this handsome baritone, who, by the way, was a Spaniard named Miguel Carlos Speranza, that Jane Snow was then aboard her father's vessel.Captain Lote was not in the habit of taking his women-folks on his voyages with him."Skirts clutter up the deck too much," was his opinion.

He had taken Jane, however, not only on this voyage, but on that preceding it, which had been to Rio.It was Captain Lote's belief, and his wife's hope, that a succession of sea winds might blow away recollections of Senor Speranza--"fan the garlic out of her head,"as the captain inelegantly expressed it.Jane had spent her sixteenth and seventeenth years at a school for girls near Boston.

The opera company of which Speranza was a member was performing at one of the minor theaters.A party of the school girls, duly chaperoned and faculty-guarded, of course, attended a series of matinees.At these matinees Jane first saw her hero, brave in doublet and hose, and braver still in melody and romance.She and her mates looked and listened and worshiped from afar, as is the habit of maidenly youth under such circumstances.There is no particular danger in such worship provided the worshiper remains always at a safely remote distance from the idol.But in Jane's case this safety-bar was removed by Fate.The wife of a friend of her father's, the friend being a Boston merchant named Cole with whom Captain Zelotes had had business dealings for many years, was a music lover.She was in the habit of giving what she was pleased to call "musical teas" at her home.Jane, to whom Mr.and Mrs.

Cole had taken a marked fancy, was often invited to those teas and, because the Coles were "among our nicest people," she was permitted by the school authorities to attend.

At one of those teas Senor Miguel Carlos Speranza was the brightest star.The Senor, then in his twenty-ninth year, handsome, talented and picturesque, shone refulgent.Other and far more experienced feminine hearts than Jane Snow's were flutteringly disturbed by the glory of his rays.Jane and he met, they shook hands, they conversed.And at subsequent teas they met again, for Speranza, on his part, was strongly attracted to the simple, unaffected Cape Cod schoolgirl.It was not her beauty alone--though beauty she had and of an unusual type--it was something else, a personality which attracted all who met her.The handsome Spaniard had had many love affairs of a more or less perfunctory kind, but here was something different, something he had not known.He began by exerting his powers of fascination in a lazy, careless way.To his astonishment the said powers were not overwhelming.If Jane was fascinated she was not conquered.She remained sweet, simple, direct, charmingly aloof.

And Speranza was at first puzzled, then piqued, then himself madly fascinated.He wrote fervid letters, he begged for interviews, he haunted each one of Mrs.Cole's "teas." And, at last, he wrung from Jane a confession of her love, her promise to marry him.And that very week Miss Donaldson, the head of the school, discovered and read a package of the Senor's letters to her pupil.

Captain Zelotes happened to be at home from a voyage.Being summoned from South Harniss, he came to Boston and heard the tale from Miss Donaldson's agitated lips.Jane was his joy, his pride;her future was the great hope and dream of his life.WHEN she married--which was not to be thought of for an indefinite number of years to come--she would of course marry a--well, not a President of the United States, perhaps--but an admiral possibly, or a millionaire, or the owner of a fleet of steamships, or something like that.The idea that she should even think of marrying a play-actor was unbelievable.The captain had never attended the performance of an opera; what was more, he never expected to attend one.He had been given to understand that a "parcel of play-actin'

men and women hollered and screamed to music for a couple of hours." Olive, his wife, had attended an opera once and, according to her, it was more like a cat fight than anything else.Nobody but foreigners ever had anything to do with operas.And for foreigners of all kinds--but the Latin variety of foreigner in particular--Captain Zelotes Snow cherished a detest which was almost fanatic.

And now his daughter, his own Janie, was receiving ardent love letters from a play-acting foreigner, a Spaniard, a "Portygee," a "macaroni-eater"! When finally convinced that it was true, that the letters had really been written to Jane, which took some time, he demanded first of all to be shown the "Portygee." Miss Donaldson could not, of course, produce the latter forthwith, but she directed her irate visitor to the theater where the opera company was then performing.To the theater Captain Zelotes went.

He did not find Speranza there, but from a frightened attendant he browbeat the information that the singer was staying at a certain hotel.So the captain went to the hotel.It was eleven o'clock in the morning, Senor Speranza was in bed and could not be disturbed.