________________________________________________
_ THROUGH good and evil report in the varying fortune of that
struggle which Don Jose had characterized in the phrase, "the
fate of national honesty trembles in the balance," the Gould
Concession, "Imperium in Imperio," had gone on working; the
square mountain had gone on pouring its treasure down the wooden
shoots to the unresting batteries of stamps; the lights of San
Tome had twinkled night after night upon the great, limitless
shadow of the Campo; every three months the silver escort had
gone down to the sea as if neither the war nor its consequences
could ever affect the ancient Occidental State secluded beyond
its high barrier of the Cordillera. All the fighting took place
on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated peaks lorded
over by the white dome of Higuerota and as yet unbreached by the
railway, of which only the first part, the easy Campo part from
Sulaco to the Ivie Valley at the foot of the pass, had been laid.
Neither did the telegraph line cross the mountains yet; its
poles, like slender beacons on the plain, penetrated into the
forest fringe of the foot-hills cut by the deep avenue of the
track; and its wire ended abruptly in the construction camp at a
white deal table supporting a Morse apparatus, in a long hut of
planks with a corrugated iron roof overshadowed by gigantic cedar
trees--the quarters of the engineer in charge of the advance
section.
The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in railway material,
and with the movements of troops along the coast. The O.S.N.
Company found much occupation for its fleet. Costaguana had no
navy, and, apart from a few coastguard cutters, there were no
national ships except a couple of old merchant steamers used as
transports.
Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick of history,
found time for an hour or so during an afternoon in the
drawing-room of the Casa Gould, where, with a strange ignorance
of the real forces at work around him, he professed himself
delighted to get away from the strain of affairs. He did not know
what he would have done without his invaluable Nostromo, he
declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics gave him more
work--he confided to Mrs. Gould--than he had bargained for.
Don Jose Avellanos had displayed in the service of the endangered
Ribiera Government an organizing activity and an eloquence of
which the echoes reached even Europe. For, after the new loan to
the Ribiera Government, Europe had become interested in
Costaguana. The Sala of the Provincial Assembly (in the
Municipal Buildings of Sulaco), with its portraits of the
Liberators on the walls and an old flag of Cortez preserved in a
glass case above the President's chair, had heard all these
speeches--the early one containing the impassioned declaration
"Militarism is the enemy," the famous one of the "trembling
balance" delivered on the occasion of the vote for the raising of
a second Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming
Government; and when the provinces again displayed their old
flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento's time) there was another of
those great orations, when Don Jose greeted these old emblems of
the war of Independence, brought out again in the name of new
Ideals. The old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For his part
he did not wish to revive old political doctrines. They were
perishable. They died. But the doctrine of political rectitude
was immortal. The second Sulaco regiment, to whom he was
presenting this flag, was going to show its valour in a contest
for order, peace, progress; for the establishment of national
self-respect without which--he declared with energy--"we are a
reproach and a byword amongst the powers of the world."
Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly
with his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later
story of his captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento
was well known to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not
been a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which
marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the
country with the sombre imbecility of political fanaticism. The
power of Supreme Government had become in his dull mind an object
of strange worship, as if it were some sort of cruel deity. It
was incarnated in himself, and his adversaries, the Federalists,
were the supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and fear,
as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For years he had
carried about at the tail of the Army of Pacification, all over
the country, a captive band of such atrocious criminals, who
considered themselves most unfortunate at not having been
summarily executed. It was a diminishing company of nearly naked
skeletons, loaded with irons, covered with dirt, with vermin,
with raw wounds, all men of position, of education, of wealth,
who had learned to fight amongst themselves for scraps of rotten
beef thrown to them by soldiers, or to beg a negro cook for a
drink of muddy water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos,
clanking his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in
order to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel
torture a human body can stand without parting with the last
spark of life. Sometimes interrogatories, backed by some
primitive method of torture, were administered to them by a
commission of officers hastily assembled in a hut of sticks and
branches, and made pitiless by the fear for their own lives. A
lucky one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would
perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a file of
soldiers. Always an army chaplain--some unshaven, dirty man, girt
with a sword and with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on
the left breast of a lieutenant's uniform--would follow,
cigarette in the corner of the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to
hear the confession and give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour
of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus officially in
petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational clemency.
The irregular report of the firing squad would be heard, followed
sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud of
smoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Army of
Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the
forests, crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the
haciendas of the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns
in the fulfilment of its patriotic mission, and leaving behind a
united land wherein the evil taint of Federalism could no longer
be detected in the smoke of burning houses and the smell of spilt
blood. Don Jose Avellanos had survived that time. Perhaps, when
contemptuously signifying to him his release, the Citizen Saviour
of the Country might have thought this benighted aristocrat too
broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer
dangerous. Or, perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman
Bento, usually full of fanciful fears and brooding suspicions,
had sudden accesses of unreasonable self-confidence when he
perceived himself elevated on a pinnacle of power and safety
beyond the reach of mere mortal plotters. At such times he would
impulsively command the celebration of a solemn Mass of
thanksgiving, which would be sung in great pomp in the cathedral
of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient Archbishop of his
creation. He heard it sitting in a gilt armchair placed before
the high altar, surrounded by the civil and military heads of his
Government. The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into
the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of mark to
stay away from these manifestations of presidential piety. Having
thus acknowledged the only power he was at all disposed to
recognize as above himself, he would scatter acts of political
grace in a sardonic wantonness of clemency. There was no other
way left now to enjoy his power but by seeing his crushed
adversaries crawl impotently into the light of day out of the
dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their harmlessness fed his
insatiable vanity, and they could always be got hold of again. It
was the rule for all the women of their families to present
thanks afterwards in a special audience. The incarnation of that
strange god, El Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked
hat on head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter to show their
gratitude by bringing up their children in fidelity to the
democratic form of government, "which I have established for the
happiness of our country." His front teeth having been knocked
out in some accident of his former herdsman's life, his utterance
was spluttering and indistinct. He had been working for
Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and opposition. Let
it cease now lest he should become weary of forgiving!
Don Jose Avellanos had known this forgiveness.
He was broken in health and fortune deplorably enough to present
a truly gratifying spectacle to the supreme chief of democratic
institutions. He retired to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in
that province, and she nursed him back to life out of the house
of death and captivity. When she died, their daughter, an only
child, was old enough to devote herself to "poor papa."
Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly in England,
was a tall, grave girl, with a self-possessed manner, a wide,
white forehead, a wealth of rich brown hair, and blue eyes.
The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her character
and accomplishments. She was reputed to be terribly learned and
serious. As to pride, it was well known that all the Corbelans
were proud, and her mother was a Corbelan. Don Jose Avellanos
depended very much upon the devotion of his beloved Antonia. He
accepted it in the benighted way of men, who, though made in
God's image, are like stone idols without sense before the smoke
of certain burnt offerings. He was ruined in every way, but a man
possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life. Don Jose
Avellanos desired passionately for his country: peace,
prosperity, and (as the end of the preface to "Fifty Years of
Misrule" has it) "an honourable place in the comity of civilized
nations." In this last phrase the Minister Plenipotentiary,
cruelly humiliated by the bad faith of his Government towards the
foreign bondholders, stands disclosed in the patriot.
The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the tyranny of
Guzman Bento seemed to bring his desire to the very door of
opportunity. He was too old to descend personally into the centre
of the arena at Sta. Marta. But the men who acted there sought
his advice at every step. He himself thought that he could be
most useful at a distance, in Sulaco. His name, his connections,
his former position, his experience commanded the respect of his
class. The discovery that this man, living in dignified poverty
in the Corbelan town residence (opposite the Casa Gould), could
dispose of material means towards the support of the cause
increased his influence. It was his open letter of appeal that
decided the candidature of Don Vincente Ribiera for the
Presidency. Another of these informal State papers drawn up by
Don Jose (this time in the shape of an address from the Province)
induced that scrupulous constitutionalist to accept the
extraordinary powers conferred upon him for five years by an
overwhelming vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It was a specific
mandate to establish the prosperity of the people on the basis of
firm peace at home, and to redeem the national credit by the
satisfaction of all just claims abroad.
On the afternoon the news of that vote had reached Sulaco by the
usual roundabout postal way through Cayta, and up the coast by
steamer. Don Jose, who had been waiting for the mail in the
Goulds' drawing-room, got out of the rocking-chair, letting his
hat fall off his knees. He rubbed his silvery, short hair with
both hands, speechless with the excess of joy.
"Emilia, my soul," he had burst out, "let me embrace you! Let
me--"
Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an
apt remark about the dawn of a new era; but if Don Jose thought
something of the kind, his eloquence failed him on this occasion.
The inspirer of that revival of the Blanco party tottered where
he stood. Mrs. Gould moved forward quickly and, as she offered
her cheek with a smile to her old friend, managed very cleverly
to give him the support of her arm he really needed.
Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a time he could
do no more than murmur, "Oh, you two patriots! Oh, you two
patriots!"--looking from one to the other. Vague plans of another
historical work, wherein all the devotions to the regeneration of
the country he loved would be enshrined for the reverent worship
of posterity, flitted through his mind. The historian who had
enough elevation of soul to write of Guzman Bento: "Yet this
monster, imbrued in the blood of his countrymen, must not be held
unreservedly to the execration of future years. It appears to be
true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve
years of peace; and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he
was, he died poor. His worst fault, perhaps, was not his
ferocity, but his ignorance;" the man who could write thus of a
cruel persecutor (the passage occurs in his "History of Misrule")
felt at the foreshadowing of success an almost boundless
affection for his two helpers, for these two young people from
over the sea.
Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practical
necessity, stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry
Gould had drawn the sword, so now, the times being changed,
Charles Gould had flung the silver of the San Tome into the fray.
The Inglez of Sulaco, the "Costaguana Englishman" of the third
generation, was as far from being a political intriguer as his
uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler. Springing from the
instinctive uprightness of their natures their action was
reasoned. They saw an opportunity and used the weapon to hand.
Charles Gould's position--a commanding position in the background
of that attempt to retrieve the peace and the credit of the
Republic--was very clear. At the beginning he had had to
accommodate himself to existing circumstances of corruption so
naively brazen as to disarm the hate of a man courageous enough
not to be afraid of its irresponsible potency to ruin everything
it touched. It seemed to him too contemptible for hot anger even.
He made use of it with a cold, fearless scorn, manifested rather
than concealed by the forms of stony courtesy which did away with
much of the ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps, he
suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly illusions, but
he refused to discuss the ethical view with his wife. He trusted
that, though a little disenchanted, she would be intelligent
enough to understand that his character safeguarded the
enterprise of their lives as much or more than his policy. The
extraordinary development of the mine had put a great power into
his hands. To feel that prosperity always at the mercy of
unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him. To Mrs. Gould it
was humiliating. At any rate, it was dangerous. In the
confidential communications passing between Charles Gould, the
King of Sulaco, and the head of the silver and steel interests
far away in California, the conviction was growing that any
attempt made by men of education and integrity ought to be
discreetly supported. "You may tell your friend Avellanos that I
think so," Mr. Holroyd had written at the proper moment from his
inviolable sanctuary within the eleven-storey high factory of
great affairs. And shortly afterwards, with a credit opened by
the Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to the Holroyd
Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana took a practical
shape under the eye of the administrator of the San Tome mine.
And Don Jose, the hereditary friend of the Gould family, could
say: "Perhaps, my dear Carlos, I shall not have believed in
vain." _
Read next: PART SECOND - THE ISABELS: CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART FIRST - THE SILVER OF THE MINE: CHAPTER VIII
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