The entrance of a British cruiser into the harbor of St. Kitts was always followed by a ball at Government House in the little capital of Basse Terre. To-night there was a squadron of three at anchor; therefore was the entertainment offered by the island’s President even more tempting than common, and hospitality had been extended to the officials and distinguished families of the neighboring islands, Nevis, Antigua, and Monserrat. On Nevis there remained but one family of eminence, that great rock having been shorn long since of all but its imperishable beauty.

But Mrs. Edis of “Great House,” an old stone mansion unaffected by time, earthquake, or hurricane, and surrounded by a remnant of one of the oldest estates in the West Indies, was still a personage in spite of her fallen fortunes, and to-night she contributed a young daughter. The introduction of Julia Edis to society had been expected all winter as she was several months past eighteen, and the President had offered her a birthday fÊte; but Mrs. Edis, with whom no man was so hardy as to argue, had replied that her daughter should enter “the world” at the auspicious moment and not before. This was taken to mean one of two things: either that in good time a squadron would arrive with potential husbands, or (but this, of course, was mere frivolous gossip) when the planets proclaimed the hour of destiny. For more than thirty years Mrs. Edis had been suspected of dabbling in the black arts, incited originally by an old creole from Martinique, grandson of the woman who so accurately cast the horoscope of Josephine. For the last eighteen of these years it had been whispered among the birds in the high palm trees that a not unsimilar destiny awaited Julia Edis.

Therefore, when the word ran round the great ball-room of Government House that the big officer with the heavy mustache and curiously hard, shallow eyes, who had pursued the debutante from the moment she entered with her fearsome mother, was Harold France, heir presumptive to a dukedom, whose present incumbent was sickly and unmarried, the dowager pack (dressed for the most part in the thick old silks and “real lace” of the mid-Victorian period) crystallized the whisper for the first time and condescended to an interest in astrology.

“But it would be odd,” said the wife of the President, “although I, for one, neither believe in that absurd old science, nor that there ever was any basis for the story. No doubt it originated with the blacks, who love any superstition.”

“Ah!” said the wife of the Magistrate, “but it is curious that the blacks on Nevis, led by the Obi doctors, besieged Great House for a night, some twenty years ago. In the morning they were driven off by Mrs. Edis herself, a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other. She handled the situation alone, for Mr. Edis was a—ill—as usual.”

“Drunk,” said the blunter lady of quality. “And so were the blacks. By dawn they were sober, sick, and flaccid. A woman of ordinary resolution could have dispersed them—and Mrs. Edis!” She shrugged her shoulders significantly.

One of the younger women, the wife of an Antigua official, chimed in eagerly. “But do you really believe she is a—a— Oh, it is too silly! I am almost ashamed to say it!”

“Astrologer,” supplied the wife of the Magistrate, who had an unprovincial mind, although she had spent the best of her years in the islands. “Look at her.”

Mrs. Edis was sitting apart from the other women, talking to the President, the Captain of the flagship, and several officers of riper years than the steaming young men in their hot uniforms frisking about the room with the cool white creole girls. Mrs. Edis had not liked women in her triumphant youth, and now in her embittered age (she was past sixty, for Julia was the last of many children), she classed them as mere tools of Nature, purveyors of scandal, and fools by right of sex and circumstance. Even in the early nineties, at all events in the world’s backlands, it was still the fashion for women of strong brains and character to despise their own sex, and Mrs. Edis had not sailed out of the Caribbean Sea since her return to Nevis, from her first and only visit to England, forty years ago. Living an almost isolated life on a tropic island, she held women in much the same regard as the unenlightened male does to-day, despite his growing uneasiness and horrid moments of vision. Upon the rare occasions when she deigned to enter the little world of the Leeward Islands, she greeted the women with a fine old-time courtesy, and demanded forthwith the attention of high officials too dignified or too portly to dance. The men, since she was neither beautiful nor young, were amused by her caustic tongue, and correspondingly flattered when she chose to be amiable.

It was difficult to believe that she had once been handsome—beautiful no one had ever called her. She was a very tall woman, already a little bowed, raw-boned, large of feature, save for the eyes, which were small, black, and piercing. Her black hair was still abundant, strong of texture, and changing only at the temples; her skin was sallow and much wrinkled, her expression harsh, haughty, tyrannical. There was no sign of weakness about her anywhere, although, now and again, as her eyes followed the bright figure of her daughter, they softened before flashing with pride and triumph.

She found herself alone with the Captain and turned to him abruptly.

“This is the eighth time Lieutenant France has taken my girl out,” she announced. “And it is true that he will be a duke?” Mrs. Edis disdained finesse, although she was capable of hoodwinking a parliament.

The Captain started under this direct attack. His large face darkened until it looked like well-laid slabs of brick pricked out with white. He cleared his throat, glanced uneasily at the formidable old lady, then answered resolutely:—

“Better take your girl home, ma’am, and keep her close while we’re in harbor.”

The look she turned on him under heavy glistening brows, that reminded the imaginative Scot of lizards, and were fit companions for her thick dilating nostrils, made him quail for a moment: like many sea martinets he was shy with women of all sorts. Then he reflected (never having heard of the black arts) that looks could not kill, and returned to the attack.

“I mean, madam, that France is not a decent sort and would have been chucked long since but for family influence.”

“What do you mean by not a decent sort, sir?”

“He’s dissipated, vicious—”

“All young men sow their wild oats.” Mrs. Edis had forgotten none of the early and mid-Victorian formulÆ, and would have felt disdain for any young aristocrat who did not illustrate the most popular of them.

“That’s all very well, but France’s crop is sown in a soil fertile to rottenness, and it will take him a lifetime to exhaust it. I’d rather see a daughter of mine in her coffin than married to him, duke or no duke.”

Mrs. Edis favored him with another look, under which his hue deepened to purple: poor worm, he was but the son of an industrious merchant, and he knew that the sharp eyes of this old woman, despite the eagle in his glance and a spine like a ramrod, read his family history in his honest face.

“It’s God’s truth, ma’am. It’s not that I mind a young fellow’s being a bit wild; there’s plenty that are and make good husbands when their time comes. But with France it’s different.” He hesitated, then floundered for a moment as if unaccustomed to analysis of his fellows. “It’s not that he’s a cad—not in the ordinary sense—I mean as far as manners go—. I’ve never seen a man with better when it suits him—or more insolent when that suits him; and they’re more natural to him, I fancy, for he’s fair eaten up with pride—out of date in that respect, rather. It’s the fashion, nowadays, for the big-wigs to be affable and easy and democratic, whether they feel that way or not—however, I don’t mind a man’s feeling his birth and blood, for like as not he can’t help it, although it doesn’t make you love him. No. It’s more like this: I believe France to be entirely without heart. That’s something I never believed in until I met him—that a human being lived without a soft spot somewhere. But I’ve seen an expression in his eyes, especially after he’s been drinking, that appalls me, although I can only express it by a word commonplace enough—heartless. It’s that—a heartless glitter in his eyes, usually about as expressionless as glass marbles; and although I’m no coward, I’ve felt afraid of him. I don’t mean physically—but absolute lack of heart, of all human sympathy, must give a person an awful power—but it’s too uncanny for me to describe. I’m not much at words, ma’am, and, for the matter of that, I shouldn’t have got on the subject at all, it not being my habit to discuss my officers with any one, if this wasn’t the first time I’ve ever seen him devote himself to a respectable girl. But he’s smitten with that pretty child of yours, no doubt of it; and there are three handsome young married women in the room, too. I don’t like the look of it.”

“I do.” Mrs. Edis had not removed her eyes from the old sailor’s face as he endeavored to elucidate himself.

“There’s many a slip, you know. The duke’s not so old, only fifty odd, and marvellous cures are worked these days. Some mother is always tracking him with a good-looking girl. As for France, his debts are about all he has to live on—”

“The President just told me that he has an income independent of his allowance from the head of his house, and I have knowledge that his expectations are founded upon certainty.”

The Captain, not long enough in port to have heard aught of Mrs. Edis’s dark reputation, glanced at her with a puzzled expression, then gave it up and answered lightly, “His income is good enough, yes, but nothing to his debts, which he never pays.”

“If he doesn’t pay his debts, what do they matter?” asked the old aristocrat, whose husband had never paid his, and whose son, having sold the last of his acres, was drinking himself into Fig Tree churchyard.

The Captain laughed. “I know your creed, madam. And I must admit that France is a true blood. He never arrives in port without being showered with writs, and he brushes them off as he would these damned mosquitoes—beg pardon, ma’am. But all the same, it wouldn’t be pleasant for your little girl. Fancy being served with a writ every morning at breakfast.”

The contempt in those sharp, unflinching eyes almost froze the words in their exit. “My daughter would never know what they were. Of money matters she knows as little as of Life itself. Writs would not disturb her youthful joyousness and serenity for an instant.”

“Damn these aristocrats!” thought the old sailor. “And what a hole this must be!” He continued aloud, “But after the luxury of her old home—”

“Luxury? We are as poor as mice. If my father had not put a portion of his estate in trust for me, as soon as he discovered that my husband was a spendthrift, we should have been on the parish long ago.”

The Captain opened his blue eyes, eyes that looked oddly soft and young (when not on duty) in his battered visage. “And you mean to say, that having married a spendthrift—Was he also dissipated?”

“Drank himself to death.”

“And you are prepared to hand over your innocent little daughter to the same fate? But it is incredible, ma’am! Incredible! I was thinking that you merely knew nothing of the world down here.”

“It’s little you could teach me!” She continued after a moment, with more condescension: “There are no family secrets in these islands, and as many skeletons outside the graveyards as in. My husband squandered every acre he inherited, every penny of mine he could lay hands on. He reduced me, the proudest woman in the Caribbees, to a mere nobody. Therefore, am I determined that my child shall realize the great ambitions that turned to dust in my fingers. I have knowledge, which does not concern you, that this marriage—look for yourself, and see that it is inevitable—will be but an incident while greater things are preparing.”

“Oh, if you have a medical certificate! But even as a duchess—” He paused and turning his head stared at the couple waltzing past. “There is no doubt as to the state of his mind. He looks the usual silly ass that a man always does when bowled over. But your daughter? I see nothing but innocent triumph in her delightful little face. There’s no love there—neither ambition.”

“There’ll be what I wish before the week is out.”

“She’s too good for France, and she’s not ambitious,” said the Captain, doggedly. “Do you love her, madam?”

“I have never loved any one else.” The old woman’s harsh voice did not soften. “Save, of course,” with a negligent wave of her hand, “her father, when I was young and foolish. So much the better if she does not love her husband. Women born to high destinies have no need of love. What little I remember of that silly and degrading passion makes me wish that no daughter of mine should ever experience it. Leave it to the men, and the sooner they get over it, the better.”

“Ah—yes—but, if you will pardon me, while your daughter is one of the most charming young things I have ever seen, she is not a beauty, nor has she the grand manner. You, madam, might have made the ideal duchess, if there is such a thing, but not that child.”

This compliment, either clumsy or malicious, won him no favor; the old lady’s eyes flashed fire at his impertinence.

He went on undauntedly, “And why, pray, may I ask, do you think it so great a destiny to be a duchess?”

“What greater than to wed royalty itself? And that is hardly possible in these days.”

“Hardly. But, Lord God, madam, where have you lived? Women to-day are working out destinies for themselves. Now, personally, I should rather see my daughter a famous author, painter, singer, even, although I still have a bit of prejudice against the stage, than suddenly elevated to a class to which she was not born, particularly if led there by the hand of a man like France.”

“My daughter is a lady.”

“Oh, Lord, where am I? In the eighteenth century?” His pique and anger had vanished. He now saw nothing in the situation but present humor and future tragedy; and feeling that his ammunition was exhausted for the moment, he rose, bowed as ceremoniously as his spine would permit, and moved away. Nevertheless, he was interested, the native doggedness which had enabled him to overcome social disabilities was actively roused; moreover, if there was one man whom he disliked more profoundly than another, it was Harold France, and he resented the influence which kept a scoundrel in an honorable profession, when he should have been kicked out with a publicity that would have been a healthy lesson to his class.

He left the hot ball-room and went out upon the terrace to enjoy a cigar and meditate upon the singular character with whom he had exchanged hot shot for nearly an hour. He had no clew to her disquieting personality, but saw that she was a woman of some importance despite her avowed poverty; and she was the elderly mother of a charming young creature with a mane of untidy red-yellow hair (it would never occur to the old sailor to use any of the popular adjectives: flame-colored, copper, Titian, bronze), immense gray eyes with thick black lashes on either lid, narrow black brows, a refined but not distinguished nose, a sweet childish mouth whose ultimate shape Nature had left to Life, a flat figure rather under medium height, covered with a white muslin frock, whose only caparison was a faded blue sash, unmistakably Victorian. Her skin, like that of the other creole girls reared in West Indian heats, was a pure transparent white, which not even dancing tinged with color. As the Captain had been brutal enough to inform her mamma she was not a beauty, but—he stared through the window at her—Youth, radiant, eager, innocent Youth that was her philter. To be sure, the ball-room of Government House was full of young girls, some of them quite beautiful, but they were not the vibrating symbols of their condition, and Julia Edis was. Not one of them possessed her entire lack of coquetry, that terrible innocence, which, combined with an equally unconscious magnetism, had played an immediate and fatal tune upon sated senses.

As the good but by no means unsophisticated sailor looked about him he felt more apprehensive still. Harold France, no doubt, was expert in love-making, and what island maiden of eighteen could resist an ardent wooer with a handsome face above six feet of Her Majesty’s uniform, on a night like this? He was disposed to curse the moon for being on duty, as she generally contrived to be in so many of the dubious crises of love; and to-night she had turned herself inside out to flood the tropical landscape, the sea, the mountains, with silver. The stars were pin-heads, the moon, in the black velvet sky of the tropics, looked like a sailing Alp, its ice and snows absorbing and flinging forth all the light in the heavens. The lofty clusters of long pointed leaves that tipped the shafts of the royal palm trees, glittered like swords, the sea near the shore was as light and vivid a green as by day, and the scent of flowers as seductive as the call of the nightingale. The music in the ball-room was sensuous, sonorous; and it was notorious that creole girls, cool and white as they looked, and dressed almost as simply as Julia Edis, were accomplished coquettes, always prepared for exciting campaigns, however brief, the moment a ship of war entered the harbor. Flirtation, love, must agitate the very air to-night. Such things are communicable, even to the most ignorant and indifferent of maidens. How could that child hope to escape?

He walked over to the window and looked in. The company was resting between dances, the girls and young officers flirting as openly as they dared, although few had ventured to defy the conventions and stroll out into the warm, scented, tropic night. Still, two or three had, proposals being almost inevitable in such conditions; and squadrons come not every day.

France had left Julia beside her mother and gone into the dining room to refresh himself. He returned in a moment, and not only tucked the young girl’s arm within his, but stood for a while talking to Mrs. Edis with his most ingratiating air.

“He means business,” thought the Captain, grimly; and then he derived some comfort from the attitude of the girl herself. She was not paying the least attention to France, although she had permitted him to take possession of her. Her big, shining, happy eyes were wandering about the room, smiling roguishly as they met those of some girl acquaintance, or observed a flirtation behind complacent backs. When the waltz began once more, she floated off in the arm of the man whose hard, opaque eyes were devouring her perfect freshness, but she paid little or no attention to his whispered compliments, being far too absorbed in the delight of dancing.

“He’s made no more impression on her than if he were a dancing master,” thought the Captain, with satisfaction. “She’s immune to tropic nights and uniforms. Gad! Wish I were a youngster. I’d enter the lists myself.”

But what could he do? He saw the satisfaction on the powerful face of Mrs. Edis, the envious glances of many mothers; no such parti as Harold France had come to these islands for many a year. And France was by no means ill to look at, if one did not analyze his eyes and mouth. He was a big, strong, positive male, with a bold, sheep-like profile (sometimes called classic), which would have made him look stupid but for a general expression of pride, so ingrained and sincere that it was almost lofty. There was not an atom of charm about him, not even common animal magnetism, but his manners were distinguished, his small brain remarkably quick, and he looked as if it had taken three valets to groom him.

The Captain almost cursed aloud. How was he to make that old woman, living on all the formulÆ of dead generations, and fancying that she knew the world, understand the difference between a wild young man and a vicious one? The girl might easily be persuaded to hate a man so aggressively masculine as France, but had she, a baby of eighteen, the strength of character to stand out against the ruthless will of her mother? Moreover, it was apparent that the vocabulary of the West Indies had yet to be enriched with those pregnant collocations, “new girl,” “new woman”; all these pretty old-fashioned young creatures had been brought up, no doubt, in a healthy submission to their parents, and if one of the parents happened to be a she-dragon, possibly her daughter would marry a ducal valetudinarian of ninety if she got her marching orders.

Should he appeal to France? The Captain, possessed though he was of the national heart of oak, felt no stomach for that interview. Imagination presented him with a vision, cruelly distinct, of the expression of high-bred insolence with which his effort would be received, the subtle manner in which he would be made to feel, that, superior officer though he might be, and in a fair way to become admiral and knight, he dwelt on the far side of that chasm which segregates the aristocrat from the plebeian. France had treated him to these sensations once or twice when he had remonstrated with him for giving way to his villainous temper, or mixed himself up in some nasty mess on shore; had even dared to threaten the prospective duke, who never noticed him when they met in Piccadilly. France had, indeed, induced such deep and righteous wrath in the worthy Captain’s breast that he might have been responsible for another convert to Socialism had it not been for the old sailor’s immutable loyalty to his queen and flag. But he hated France the more because the man was too clever for him. If he had disgraced his uniform, it always chanced that the Captain was engaged elsewhere; it was the Captain, not himself, who lost his temper during their personal encounters; his politeness, indeed, to his superior officer was unbearable. And his family influence surrounded him like wired glass; it would have saved a more reckless man from public disgrace. His mother’s brother abominated him, but used his close connection with the Admiralty to avert a family scandal; his cousin, Kingsborough, who was far too saturated with family pride, and too unsophisticated, to believe such stories as he may have heard about the heir to whom he was automatically attached, believed France’s tales of envious detractors, and protected him vigilantly. Sickly as he was, he was by no means negligible politically; he did his duty as he saw it, and, a sound Tory, was a reliable pillar of his party, whether it was in opposition or in power. Lastly, France was a good officer, and, apparently, without fear.

To-night, the Captain, thinking of his one unmarried daughter, and singularly attracted by the radiant girl about to be sacrificed by a narrow, inexperienced, long since sexless mother, hated France ferociously and made up his never wavering mind to balk him....

“And speaking of the devil’s own—”

France had stepped out upon the terrace not far from him, and alone. For a moment the man stood in shadow, then a quick, abrupt movement brought his face into a shaft of light. France, unaware of the only other occupant of the terrace, stared straight before him. The Captain looked to see his face flushed and contorted with animal desire, knowing the man as he did. But France’s face was as immobile as a mask; only, as he continued to stare, there came into his eyes what the Captain had formulated as “a heartless glitter.” It made him look neither man nor beast, but a shell without a soul, without the common instincts of humanity, a Thing apart. As the Captain, himself in shadow, gazed, fascinated, and sensible of the horror which this singular expression of France’s always induced, something stirred in his brain. Where had he seen that expression before—sometime in his remote youth?—where? where?—Suddenly he had a vision of a whole troop of faces—they marched out from some lost recess in his mind—all with that same heartless—soulless—glitter in their eyes. And then the cigar fell from his loosened lips. He had seen those faces—some thirty years ago—in an asylum for the insane one night when the more docile of the patients were permitted to have a dance.

“Good God!” he muttered. “Good God!”

France turned at the sound of the voice.

“That you, Captain?” he said negligently, his eyes merely hard and shallow again. “Jolly party, ain’t it? Of course the tropics are an old story to you, but this is my first experience of the West Indies, at least. I’m quite mad about them. And all these toppin’ girls! Never saw such skins. Come in and have a drink?”

He had spoken in his best manner, without a trace of insolence. Having delivered himself of inoffensive sentiments, quite proper to the evening, he suddenly passed his arm through that of his superior officer and led him down the terrace. The Captain, overcome by his emotions and the unwonted condescension of a prospective duke, made no resistance, drank a stiff Scotch-and-soda, then cursing himself for a snob of the best British dye, returned to the element where he felt most at home.