THE MASK OF ADELITA

GERALD MYGATT ’08

To think that it all happened within a rifle shot of the greatest city in America, in the very outskirts of New York—­this was strange.  A romance of old Spain, tingling with the memory of times when men fought single-handed for the toss of a rose or the gleam from under the black lashes of a senorita, or bled and died for the sake of a yellow silken scarf!  That such a thing should have happened as it did seems preposterous, and yet, on second thought, it occurred so naturally that at the time there was no idea of its being in the least out of place in this prosaic New World.  It was like a dream of the past—­and yet it was no dream.

It was our Saturday half-holiday and Henderson and I were driving the stagnation of a week’s confinement out of our lungs by a long walk into the country.  We were just starting back in the approaching dusk when a round stone that I happened to step on turned under my foot.  I tried to grin, and hobbled along for a moment; then I sat down at the side of the road.

“It’s my ankle.  I don’t believe I can make it, Fred.”

“Make a try at it, old man.  It’s only a short mile to the railroad station and there won’t be any footing it from there.  Perhaps walking will ease it up.”

I got up, but after a few steps sat down again.

“I’m awfully sorry, Fritz, but I simply can’t do it.  The thing hurts like all time.”

He stood still and looked about him.  The road followed the curve of a hill, at the foot of which flowed a tiny brook.  Ahead, it passed through a little colony of houses, perhaps twenty in all.  The hamlet had an air about it that marked it from numerous others we had walked through that afternoon.  The cottages appeared brighter and there were gardens among them that seemed unlike the others we had passed.  No hotel or public house of any kind was to be seen.

“I wonder what this place is,” said Henderson.  “It doesn’t look especially alluring.”

I looked up from the task of rubbing my ankle.

“No,” I commented, “it doesn’t seem alluring, and I suppose ninety-nine hundredths of the people that pass through here look at it the same way.  But to you, Fred, I’m pretty sure it would be rather attractive, and I know that it would be to me with this beastly foot.”

“What!  Stay here all night?  I guess not.”

“If you only knew what it was,” I ventured.

“Probably another of Washington’s headquarters, or the site of the Battle of—.”

“Wait a minute before you explode, and give me a chance.  This is the Spanish colony.”

“What?”

“The Spanish colony.”

“What Spanish colony?”

“Of all things, do you mean to tell me that you never heard of it?”

“I do.”