Books › Blue Book v032 n04 [ 1921 02], 1921 › scan 40
Scan 40
Blue Book v032 n04 [ 1921 02], 1921
34 lines. Read by computer on 17 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1creature who has ever been seen in the islands—not merely a physical beauty, although her deep gold hair, her marvelous golden skin with that peculiar dusky richness that is the heritage of half-caste blood, and her slender golden body made a perfect unit of beauty. In Saigon, in Madrid, in Paris, she had created sensations. She was a musician of superb finish. Her mental attributes were astounding.
3In Zamboanga, for example, she occupied a beautiful old Spanish villa near Ayala Beach, kept an expensive motor, and spent money freely. Cynics and puritans to the contrary, nothing is so gracious in the world's eye as the spending of money, unless it be the spending of brains. Sabine dispensed both. Her weekly salon was a revelation of taste and art, and to it came all those who dared, and many who should not have dared. Music, beauty and culture graced her board. Her position was secure, for there was nothing to be told against her.
5She was not at all a harpy, a vampire, a crude laborer in the field of sex—not at all! True, there were men like Summers—but rarely. It was Morcum's greed and Summers' folly which had brought about any coarse work in this instance. Sabine d'Aiglon served Sing Toy in other ways, and had served him from Manila to Sydney; points of trade, items of shipping, even politics. It was Sabine who enabled Sing & Morcum to clean up a hundred thousand, for example, on the spectacular copra and oil famine during the war.
7Tuan Franks found himself invited to the weekly salon, and attended. He came in a spirit of cynicism; he remained in one of awed incredulity, taken back to the days when he was a gentleman and revered women with a fine, high courtesy. When he made his adieux, the deep sapphire eyes of Sabine struck into him with a smiling camaraderie.
9"I like you, Tuan Franks," she said. "Will you come again, in a day or two? It is pleasant to talk with one who is a gentleman—with one who can bow gracefully!"
11An odd definition of gentility, no doubt; but Franks promised to call.
13WHEN he came again, Sabine received him in the music-room—a dim, softly silent place where many hearts had broken. Upon the piano lay a violin in an open case. After a little Franks came to it—
15Sabine was bringing a Bach fugue out of the piano as assuredly no one had ever before brought it out of that instrument. Franks looked at the violin, and an astounded cry broke from him.
17"My Lord! Why, you have a Guarnerius here!"
19She turned her head to smile slightly at him. "A violin, yes. It belonged to my brother—he was killed at Verdun. Do you play? If so, then play with me!"
21She struck into a light waltz. Franks picked up the violin and examined it with awe in his eyes. How was he to know that it had come from the pawnshop of Sing Toy, who had bought it from a drunken sailor for three dollars?
23Tuan Franks was not a pretty man. His white silks clung baggily about his withered frame. His face was golden brown, deeply tanned; his nose was red, with purpled veins. Above it his unspeakably brilliant gray eyes—as though all the energy and vitality of the body had flowed into those eyes! They changed color at times, but seldom. He looked what he was—adviser to a native ruler, a man who could not go back, and yet a man respected for what lay within himself.
25"Not that music." He shook his head at the waltz. "Not for such a marvel as this, a violin of the master! It demands dignity."
27"But me, I do not like dignity!" Sabine pouted, laughed a golden ripple, and struck a deep chord. "Did not Wagner invent ragtime, when he ragged the Preislid in his Vorspiel?"
29"That is true," admitted Franks, cuddling the fiddle beneath his chin. "Come, then—the Prize-song!"
31So they played together, and Franks loved the violin, and the heart in him ached to own it. The woman offered it to him as a gift—craftily enough, for Tuan Franks refused. But a day or two afterward she accepted a check and said she would turn over the money to a charity in Saigon. Sing Toy, later, tucked away the check for two thousand pesos and grunted with satisfaction.
33Thus it came about that Franks greatly prolonged his holiday in Zamboanga, and was a caller almost daily at the villa near Ayala Beach. Also he left the violin there, using it only when he came, fiercely enjoying the music that greeted him; for in duets Sabine was superb, and as accompanist she was a marvel.
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