"I should like to talk to him," Charles Abbott declared; "you must arrange it for me. Look here, there's nobody around, I might as well tell you that's why I came to Cuba, to fight the cursed Spanish. I'm--I'm serious, there's nothing I wouldn't do; and if I have to be killed, why, I am ready for that. It's all worked out in my head, except some petty little details. Cuba ought to be free; this oppression is horrible, like a spell on you--you're all afraid to more than whisper--that must be broken. It must! I have a good little bit of money and I can get more. You've got to help me."
Andrés clasped his hand. "That is wonderful!" His lowered exclamation vibrated with feeling. "How can you have such nobility! I am given to it, and Jaime and Remigio Florez and Tirso. But we are going to wait, we think that is better; Spain shall pay us when the time comes. Those students, eight of them, who were shot, were well known to us. They put them against a wall by the prison and fired. You could hear it clearly. But, when we are ready, the Spanish Volunteers--" hatred closed his throat, drew him up rigidly. "Not yet," he insisted; "this shall be different, forever. Perhaps your country will help us then."
Charles was increasingly impatient; he couldn't, he felt, wait, delay his gesture for freedom. He conceived the idea that he might kill the Captain-General of Spain in Cuba, shoot him from the step of his carriage and cry that it was a memorial of the innocent boys he had murdered. Andrés dissuaded him; it would, he said, only make the conditions of living more difficult, harsh, put off the other, the final, consummation.
Below, on the promenade, the rows of gas lamps shone wanly through the close leaves of the India laurels; there was a ceaseless sauntering throng of men; then, from the Plaza de Armas, there was the hollow rattat of drums, of tattoo. It was nine o'clock. The night was magnificent, and Charles Abbott was choked by his emotions; it seemed to him that his heart must burst with its expanding desire of heroic good. He had left the earth for cloudy glories, his blood turned to a silver essence distilled in ethereal honor; he was no longer a body, but a vow, a purpose.