________________________________________________
_ THE Gould carriage was the first to return from the harbour to
the empty town. On the ancient pavement, laid out in patterns,
sunk into ruts and holes, the portly Ignacio, mindful of the
springs of the Parisian-built landau, had pulled up to a walk,
and Decoud in his corner contemplated moodily the inner aspect of
the gate. The squat turreted sides held up between them a mass of
masonry with bunches of grass growing at the top, and a grey,
heavily scrolled, armorial shield of stone above the apex of the
arch with the arms of Spain nearly smoothed out as if in
readiness for some new device typical of the impending progress.
The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to augment
Decoud's irritation. He muttered something to himself, then began
to talk aloud in curt, angry phrases thrown at the silence of the
two women. They did not look at him at all; while Don Jose, with
his semi-translucent, waxy complexion, overshadowed by the soft
grey hat, swayed a little to the jolts of the carriage by the
side of Mrs. Gould.
"This sound puts a new edge on a very old truth."
Decoud spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio on the box
above him; the old coachman, with his broad back filling a short,
silver-braided jacket, had a big pair of ears, whose thick rims
stood well away from his cropped head.
"Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the principle
is old."
He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began afresh with a
sidelong glance at Antonia--
"No, but just imagine our forefathers in morions and corselets
drawn up outside this gate, and a band of adventurers just landed
from their ships in the harbour there. Thieves, of course.
Speculators, too. Their expeditions, each one, were the
speculations of grave and reverend persons in England. That is
history, as that absurd sailor Mitchell is always saying."
"Mitchell's arrangements for the embarkation of the troops were
excellent!" exclaimed Don Jose.
"That!--that! oh, that's really the work of that Genoese seaman!
But to return to my noises; there used to be in the old days the
sound of trumpets outside that gate. War trumpets! I'm sure they
were trumpets. I have read somewhere that Drake, who was the
greatest of these men, used to dine alone in his cabin on board
ship to the sound of trumpets. In those days this town was full
of wealth. Those men came to take it. Now the whole land is like
a treasure-house, and all these people are breaking into it,
whilst we are cutting each other's throats. The only thing that
keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they'll come to an
agreement some day--and by the time we've settled our quarrels
and become decent and honourable, there'll be nothing left for
us. It has always been the same. We are a wonderful people, but
it has always been our fate to be"--he did not say "robbed," but
added, after a pause--"exploited!"
Mrs. Gould said, "Oh, this is unjust!" And Antonia interjected,
"Don't answer him, Emilia. He is attacking me."
"You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos!" Decoud
answered.
And then the carriage stopped before the door of the Casa Gould.
The young man offered his hand to the ladies. They went in first
together; Don Jose walked by the side of Decoud, and the gouty
old porter tottered after them with some light wraps on his arm.
Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journalist of
Sulaco.
"The Porvenir must have a long and confident article upon Barrios
and the irresistibleness of his army of Cayta! The moral effect
should be kept up in the country. We must cable encouraging
extracts to Europe and the United States to maintain a favourable
impression abroad."
Decoud muttered, "Oh, yes, we must comfort our friends, the
speculators."
The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen of plants in
vases along the balustrade, holding out motionless blossoms, and
all the glass doors of the reception-rooms thrown open. A jingle
of spurs died out at the further end.
Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft tone to
the passing ladies, "The Senor Administrador is just back from
the mountain."
In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish and modern
European furniture making as if different centres under the high
white spread of the ceiling, the silver and porcelain of the
tea-service gleamed among a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit
of a lady's boudoir, putting in a note of feminine and intimate
delicacy.
Don Jose in his rocking-chair placed his hat on his lap, and
Decoud walked up and down the whole length of the room, passing
between tables loaded with knick-knacks and almost disappearing
behind the high backs of leathern sofas. He was thinking of the
angry face of Antonia; he was confident that he would make his
peace with her. He had not stayed in Sulaco to quarrel with
Antonia.
Martin Decoud was angry with himself. All he saw and heard going
on around him exasperated the preconceived views of his European
civilization. To contemplate revolutions from the distance of the
Parisian Boulevards was quite another matter. Here on the spot it
was not possible to dismiss their tragic comedy with the
expression, "Quelle farce!"
The reality of the political action, such as it was, seemed
closer, and acquired poignancy by Antonia's belief in the cause.
Its crudeness hurt his feelings. He was surprised at his own
sensitiveness.
"I suppose I am more of a Costaguanero than I would have believed
possible," he thought to himself.
His disdain grew like a reaction of his scepticism against the
action into which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia.
He soothed himself by saying he was not a patriot, but a lover.
The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank low before the
little tea-table. Antonia took up her usual place at the
reception hour--the corner of a leathern couch, with a rigid
grace in her pose and a fan in her hand. Decoud, swerving from
the straight line of his march, came to lean over the high back
of her seat.
For a long time he talked into her ear from behind, softly, with
a half smile and an air of apologetic familiarity. Her fan lay
half grasped on her knees. She never looked at him. His rapid
utterance grew more and more insistent and caressing. At last he
ventured a slight laugh.
"No, really. You must forgive me. One must be serious sometimes."
He paused. She turned her head a little; her blue eyes glided
slowly towards him, slightly upwards, mollified and questioning.
"You can't think I am serious when I call Montero a gran' bestia
every second day in the Porvenir? That is not a serious
occupation. No occupation is serious, not even when a bullet
through the heart is the penalty of failure!"
Her hand closed firmly on her fan.
"Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense, may creep into
thinking; some glimpse of truth. I mean some effective truth, for
which there is no room in politics or journalism. I happen to
have said what I thought. And you are angry! If you do me the
kindness to think a little you will see that I spoke like a
patriot."
She opened her red lips for the first time, not unkindly.
"Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used as they are. I
suppose nobody is really disinterested, unless, perhaps, you, Don
Martin."
"God forbid! It's the last thing I should like you to believe of
me." He spoke lightly, and paused.
She began to fan herself with a slow movement without raising her
hand. After a time he whispered passionately--
"Antonia!"
She smiled, and extended her hand after the English manner
towards Charles Gould, who was bowing before her; while Decoud,
with his elbows spread on the back of the sofa, dropped his eyes
and murmured, "Bonjour."
The Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine bent over his wife
for a moment. They exchanged a few words, of which only the
phrase, "The greatest enthusiasm," pronounced by Mrs. Gould,
could be heard.
"Yes," Decoud began in a murmur. "Even he!"
"This is sheer calumny," said Antonia, not very severely.
"You just ask him to throw his mine into the melting-pot for the
great cause," Decoud whispered.
Don Jose had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands cheerily. The
excellent aspect of the troops and the great quantity of new
deadly rifles on the shoulders of those brave men seemed to fill
him with an ecstatic confidence.
Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair, listened, but
nothing could be discovered in his face except a kind and
deferential attention.
Meantime, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the room, stood
looking out of one of the three long windows giving on the
street. Decoud followed her. The window was thrown open, and he
leaned against the thickness of the wall. The long folds of the
damask curtain, falling straight from the broad brass cornice,
hid him partly from the room. He folded his arms on his breast,
and looked steadily at Antonia's profile.
The people returning from the harbour filled the pavements; the
shuffle of sandals and a low murmur of voices ascended to the
window. Now and then a coach rolled slowly along the disjointed
roadway of the Calle de la Constitucion. There were not many
private carriages in Sulaco; at the most crowded hour on the
Alameda they could be counted with one glance of the eye. The
great family arks swayed on high leathern springs, full of pretty
powdered faces in which the eyes looked intensely alive and
black. And first Don Juste Lopez, the President of the Provincial
Assembly, passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a
black frock-coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a debate
from a high tribune. Though they all raised their eyes, Antonia
did not make the usual greeting gesture of a fluttered hand, and
they affected not to see the two young people, Costaguaneros with
European manners, whose eccentricities were discussed behind the
barred windows of the first families in Sulaco. And then the
widowed Senora Gavilaso de Valdes rolled by, handsome and
dignified, in a great machine in which she used to travel to and
from her country house, surrounded by an armed retinue in leather
suits and big sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their
saddles. She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud,
rich, and kind-hearted. Her second son, Jaime, had just gone off
on the Staff of Barrios. The eldest, a worthless fellow of a
moody disposition, filled Sulaco with the noise of his
dissipations, and gambled heavily at the club. The two youngest
boys, with yellow Ribierist cockades in their caps, sat on the
front seat. She, too, affected not to see the Senor Decoud
talking publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention.
And he not even her novio as far as the world knew! Though, even
in that case, it would have been scandal enough. But the
dignified old lady, respected and admired by the first families,
would have been still more shocked if she could have heard the
words they were exchanging.
"Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only one aim in the
world."
She made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head,
still staring across the street at the Avellanos's house, grey,
marked with decay, and with iron bars like a prison.
"And it would be so easy of attainment," he continued, "this aim
which, whether knowingly or not, I have always had in my
heart--ever since the day when you snubbed me so horribly once in
Paris, you remember."
A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip that was on
his side.
"You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of Charlotte
Corday in a schoolgirl's dress; a ferocious patriot. I suppose
you would have stuck a knife into Guzman Bento?"
She interrupted him. "You do me too much honour."
"At any rate," he said, changing suddenly to a tone of bitter
levity, "you would have sent me to stab him without compunction."
"Ah, par exemple!" she murmured in a shocked tone.
"Well," he argued, mockingly, "you do keep me here writing deadly
nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already killed my self-respect.
And you may imagine," he continued, his tone passing into light
banter, "that Montero, should he be successful, would get even
with me in the only way such a brute can get even with a man of
intelligence who condescends to call him a gran' bestia three
times a week. It's a sort of intellectual death; but there is the
other one in the background for a journalist of my ability."
"If he is successful!" said Antonia, thoughtfully.
"You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread," Decoud
replied, with a broad smile. "And the other Montero, the 'my
trusted brother' of the proclamations, the guerrillero--haven't I
written that he was taking the guests' overcoats and changing
plates in Paris at our Legation in the intervals of spying on our
refugees there, in the time of Rojas? He will wash out that
sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you look annoyed? This
is simply a bit of the biography of one of our great men. What do
you think he will do to me? There is a certain convent wall round
the corner of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You
know? Opposite the door with the inscription, Intrada de la
Sombra.' Appropriate, perhaps! That's where the uncle of our host
gave up his Anglo-South-American soul. And, note, he might have
run away. A man who has fought with weapons may run away. You
might have let me go with Barrios if you had cared for me. I
would have carried one of those rifles, in which Don Jose
believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in the ranks of poor
peons and Indios, that know nothing either of reason or politics.
The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth would
have been safer than that for which you made me stay here. When
you make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your time in
inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die."
His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she
stood motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down
from her interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then--
"I shall go to the wall," he said, with a sort of jocular
desperation.
Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her head
remained still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avellanos,
whose chipped pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation
of dignity was hidden now by the gathering dusk of the street. In
her whole figure her lips alone moved, forming the words--
"Martin, you will make me cry."
He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a
sort of awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still
stiffened about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes.
The value of a sentence is in the personality which utters it,
for nothing new can be said by man or woman; and those were the
last words, it seemed to him, that could ever have been spoken by
Antonia. He had never made it up with her so completely in all
their intercourse of small encounters; but even before she had
time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with a rigid
grace, he had begun to plead--
"My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is
transported with joy. I won't say anything of my mother! Our
mothers were like sisters. There is the mail-boat for the south
next week--let us go. That Moraga is a fool! A man like Montero
is bribed. It's the practice of the country. It's tradition
--it's politics. Read 'Fifty Years of Misrule.'"
"Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes--"
"I have the greatest tenderness for your father," he began,
hurriedly. "But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has miserably
mismanaged this business. Perhaps your father did, too; I don't
know. Montero was bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his
share of this famous loan for national development. Why didn't
the stupid Sta. Marta people give him a mission to Europe, or
something? He would have taken five years' salary in advance, and
gone on loafing in Paris, this stupid, ferocious Indio!"
"The man," she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before this
outburst, "was intoxicated with vanity. We had all the
information, not from Moraga only; from others, too. There was
his brother intriguing, too."
"Oh, yes!" he said. "Of course you know. You know everything. You
read all the correspondence, you write all the papers--all those
State papers that are inspired here, in this room, in blind
deference to a theory of political purity. Hadn't you Charles
Gould before your eyes? Rey de Sulaco! He and his mine are the
practical demonstration of what could have been done. Do you
think he succeeded by his fidelity to a theory of virtue? And all
those railway people, with their honest work! Of course, their
work is honest! But what if you cannot work honestly till the
thieves are satisfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told this
Sir John what's-his-name that Montero had to be bought off--he
and all his Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve?
He ought to have been bought off with his own stupid weight of
gold--his weight of gold, I tell you, boots, sabre, spurs, cocked
hat, and all."
She shook her head slightly. "It was impossible," she murmured.
"He wanted the whole lot? What?"
She was facing him now in the deep recess of the window, very
close and motionless. Her lips moved rapidly. Decoud, leaning his
back against the wall, listened with crossed arms and lowered
eyelids. He drank the tones of her even voice, and watched the
agitated life of her throat, as if waves of emotion had run from
her heart to pass out into the air in her reasonable words. He
also had his aspirations, he aspired to carry her away out of
these deadly futilities of pronunciamientos and reforms. All this
was wrong--utterly wrong; but she fascinated him, and sometimes
the sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the charm, replace the
fascination by a sudden unwilling thrill of interest. Some women
hovered, as it were, on the threshold of genius, he reflected.
They did not want to know, or think, or understand. Passion stood
for all that, and he was ready to believe that some startlingly
profound remark, some appreciation of character, or a judgment
upon an event, bordered on the miraculous. In the mature Antonia
he could see with an extraordinary vividness the austere
schoolgirl of the earlier days. She seduced his attention;
sometimes he could not restrain a murmur of assent; now and then
he advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they began to
argue; the curtain half hid them from the people in the sala.
Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of shadow between
the houses, lit up vaguely by the glimmer of street lamps,
ascended the evening silence of Sulaco; the silence of a town
with few carriages, of unshod horses, and a softly sandalled
population. The windows of the Casa Gould flung their shining
parallelograms upon the house of the Avellanos. Now and then a
shuffle of feet passed below with the pulsating red glow of a
cigarette at the foot of the walls; and the night air, as if
cooled by the snows of Higuerota, refreshed their faces.
"We Occidentals," said Martin Decoud, using the usual term the
provincials of Sulaco applied to themselves, "have been always
distinct and separated. As long as we hold Cayta nothing can
reach us. In all our troubles no army has marched over those
mountains. A revolution in the central provinces isolates us at
once. Look how complete it is now! The news of Barrios' movement
will be cabled to the United States, and only in that way will it
reach Sta. Marta by the cable from the other seaboard. We have
the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the purest blood in
our great families, the most laborious population. The Occidental
Province should stand alone. The early Federalism was not bad for
us. Then came this union which Don Henrique Gould resisted. It
opened the road to tyranny; and, ever since, the rest of
Costaguana hangs like a millstone round our necks. The Occidental
territory is large enough to make any man's country. Look at the
mountains! Nature itself seems to cry to us, 'Separate!'"
She made an energetic gesture of negation. A silence fell.
"Oh, yes, I know it's contrary to the doctrine laid down in the
'History of Fifty Years' Misrule.' I am only trying to be
sensible. But my sense seems always to give you cause for
offence. Have I startled you very much with this perfectly
reasonable aspiration?"
She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but the idea
shocked her early convictions. Her patriotism was larger. She had
never considered that possibility.
"It may yet be the means of saving some of your convictions," he
said, prophetically.
She did not answer. She seemed tired. They leaned side by side on
the rail of the little balcony, very friendly, having exhausted
politics, giving themselves up to the silent feeling of their
nearness, in one of those profound pauses that fall upon the
rhythm of passion. Towards the plaza end of the street the
glowing coals in the brazeros of the market women cooking their
evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the pavement. A man
appeared without a sound in the light of a street lamp, showing
the coloured inverted triangle of his bordered poncho, square on
his shoulders, hanging to a point below his knees. From the
harbour end of the Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping
mount, gleaming silver-grey abreast each lamp under the dark
shape of the rider.
"Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores," said Decoud,
gently, "coming in all his splendour after his work is done. The
next great man of Sulaco after Don Carlos Gould. But he is
good-natured, and let me make friends with him."
"Ah, indeed!" said Antonia. "How did you make friends?"
"A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular pulse, and
this man is one of the leaders of the populace. A journalist
ought to know remarkable men--and this man is remarkable in his
way."
"Ah, yes!" said Antonia, thoughtfully. "It is known that this
Italian has a great influence."
The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam of dim light on
the shining broad quarters of the grey mare, on a bright heavy
stirrup, on a long silver spur; but the short flick of yellowish
flame in the dusk was powerless against the muffled-up
mysteriousness of the dark figure with an invisible face
concealed by a great sombrero.
Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the balcony, side by
side, touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness
of the street, and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs.
This was a tete-a-tete of extreme impropriety; something of which
in the whole extent of the Republic only the extraordinary
Antonia could be capable--the poor, motherless girl, never
accompanied, with a careless father, who had thought only of
making her learned. Even Decoud himself seemed to feel that this
was as much as he could expect of having her to himself
till--till the revolution was over and he could carry her off to
Europe, away from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly
seemed even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one Montero
there would be another, the lawlessness of a populace of all
colours and races, barbarism, irremediable tyranny. As the great
Liberator Bolivar had said in the bitterness of his spirit,
"America is ungovernable. Those who worked for her independence
have ploughed the sea." He did not care, he declared boldly; he
seized every opportunity to tell her that though she had managed
to make a Blanco journalist of him, he was no patriot. First of
all, the word had no sense for cultured minds, to whom the
narrowness of every belief is odious; and secondly, in connection
with the everlasting troubles of this unhappy country it was
hopelessly besmirched; it had been the cry of dark barbarism, the
cloak of lawlessness, of crimes, of rapacity, of simple thieving.
He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance. He had no
need to drop his voice; it had been low all the time, a mere
murmur in the silence of dark houses with their shutters closed
early against the night air, as is the custom of Sulaco. Only the
sala of the Casa Gould flung out defiantly the blaze of its four
windows, the bright appeal of light in the whole dumb obscurity
of the street. And the murmur on the little balcony went on after
a short pause.
"But we are labouring to change all that," Antonia protested. "It
is exactly what we desire. It is our object. It is the great
cause. And the word you despise has stood also for sacrifice, for
courage, for constancy, for suffering. Papa, who--"
"Ploughing the sea," interrupted Decoud, looking down.
There was below the sound of hasty and ponderous footsteps.
"Your uncle, the grand-vicar of the cathedral, has just turned
under the gate," observed Decoud. "He said Mass for the troops in
the Plaza this morning. They had built for him an altar of
drums, you know. And they brought outside all the painted blocks
to take the air. All the wooden saints stood militarily in a row
at the top of the great flight of steps. They looked like a
gorgeous escort attending the Vicar-General. I saw the great
function from the windows of the Porvenir. He is amazing, your
uncle, the last of the Corbelans. He glittered exceedingly in his
vestments with a great crimson velvet cross down his back. And
all the time our saviour Barrios sat in the Amarilla Club
drinking punch at an open window. Esprit fort--our Barrios. I
expected every moment your uncle to launch an excommunication
there and then at the black eye-patch in the window across the
Plaza. But not at all. Ultimately the troops marched off. Later
Barrios came down with some of the officers, and stood with his
uniform all unbuttoned, discoursing at the edge of the pavement.
Suddenly your uncle appeared, no longer glittering, but all
black, at the cathedral door with that threatening aspect he
has--you know, like a sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look,
strides over straight at the group of uniforms, and leads away
the general by the elbow. He walked him for a quarter of an hour
in the shade of a wall. Never let go his elbow for a moment,
talking all the time with exaltation, and gesticulating with a
long black arm. It was a curious scene. The officers seemed
struck with astonishment. Remarkable man, your missionary uncle.
He hates an infidel much less than a heretic, and prefers a
heathen many times to an infidel. He condescends graciously to
call me a heathen, sometimes, you know."
Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade, opening and
shutting the fan gently; and Decoud talked a little nervously, as
if afraid that she would leave him at the first pause. Their
comparative isolation, the precious sense of intimacy, the slight
contact of their arms, affected him softly; for now and then a
tender inflection crept into the flow of his ironic murmurs.
"Any slight sign of favour from a relative of yours is welcome,
Antonia. And perhaps he understands me, after all! But I know
him, too, our Padre Corbelan. The idea of political honour,
justice, and honesty for him consists in the restitution of the
confiscated Church property. Nothing else could have drawn that
fierce converter of savage Indians out of the wilds to work for
the Ribierist cause! Nothing else but that wild hope! He would
make a pronunciamiento himself for such an object against any
Government if he could only get followers! What does Don Carlos
Gould think of that? But, of course, with his English
impenetrability, nobody can tell what he thinks. Probably he
thinks of nothing apart from his mine; of his 'Imperium in
Imperio.' As to Mrs. Gould, she thinks of her schools, of her
hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of every sick
old man in the three villages. If you were to turn your head now
you would see her extracting a report from that sinister doctor
in a check shirt--what's his name? Monygham--or else catechising
Don Pepe or perhaps listening to Padre Roman. They are all down
here to-day--all her ministers of state. Well, she is a sensible
woman, and perhaps Don Carlos is a sensible man. It's a part of
solid English sense not to think too much; to see only what may
be of practical use at the moment. These people are not like
ourselves. We have no political reason; we have political
passions--sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular view of
our personal advantage either practical or emotional. No one is
a patriot for nothing. The word serves us well. But I am
clear-sighted, and I shall not use that word to you, Antonia! I
have no patriotic illusions. I have only the supreme illusion of
a lover."
He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly, "That can lead one
very far, though."
Behind their backs the political tide that once in every
twenty-four hours set with a strong flood through the Gould
drawing-room could be heard, rising higher in a hum of voices.
Men had been dropping in singly, or in twos and threes: the
higher officials of the province, engineers of the railway,
sunburnt and in tweeds, with the frosted head of their chief
smiling with slow, humorous indulgence amongst the young eager
faces. Scarfe, the lover of fandangos, had already slipped out in
search of some dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the
town. Don Juste Lopez, after taking his daughters home, had
entered solemnly, in a black creased coat buttoned up under his
spreading brown beard. The few members of the Provincial Assembly
present clustered at once around their President to discuss the
news of the war and the last proclamation of the rebel Montero,
the miserable Montero, calling in the name of "a justly incensed
democracy" upon all the Provincial Assemblies of the Republic to
suspend their sittings till his sword had made peace and the will
of the people could be consulted. It was practically an
invitation to dissolve: an unheard-of audacity of that evil
madman.
The indignation ran high in the knot of deputies behind Jose
Avellanos. Don Jose, lifting up his voice, cried out to them over
the high back of his chair, "Sulaco has answered by sending
to-day an army upon his flank. If all the other provinces show
only half as much patriotism as we Occidentals--"
A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrating treble of
the life and soul of the party. Yes! Yes! This was true! A great
truth! Sulaco was in the forefront, as ever! It was a boastful
tumult, the hopefulness inspired by the event of the day breaking
out amongst those caballeros of the Campo thinking of their
herds, of their lands, of the safety of their families.
Everything was at stake. . . . No! It was impossible that Montero
should succeed! This criminal, this shameless Indio! The clamour
continued for some time, everybody else in the room looking
towards the group where Don Juste had put on his air of impartial
solemnity as if presiding at a sitting of the Provincial
Assembly. Decoud had turned round at the noise, and, leaning his
back on the balustrade, shouted into the room with all the
strength of his lungs, "Gran' bestia!"
This unexpected cry had the effect of stilling the noise. All the
eyes were directed to the window with an approving expectation;
but Decoud had already turned his back upon the room, and was
again leaning out over the quiet street.
"This is the quintessence of my journalism; that is the supreme
argument," he said to Antonia. "I have invented this definition,
this last word on a great question. But I am no patriot. I am no
more of a patriot than the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this
Genoese who has done such great things for this harbour--this
active usher-in of the material implements for our progress. You
have heard Captain Mitchell confess over and over again that till
he got this man he could never tell how long it would take to
unload a ship. That is bad for progress. You have seen him pass
by after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls in
some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a fortunate fellow!
His work is an exercise of personal powers; his leisure is spent
in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation. And he likes
it, too. Can anybody be more fortunate? To be feared and admired
is--"
"And are these your highest aspirations, Don Martin?" interrupted
Antonia.
"I was speaking of a man of that sort," said Decoud, curtly. "The
heroes of the world have been feared and admired. What more could
he want?"
Decoud had often felt his familiar habit of ironic thought fall
shattered against Antonia's gravity. She irritated him as if she,
too, had suffered from that inexplicable feminine obtuseness
which stands so often between a man and a woman of the more
ordinary sort. But he overcame his vexation at once. He was very
far from thinking Antonia ordinary, whatever verdict his
scepticism might have pronounced upon himself. With a touch of
penetrating tenderness in his voice he assured her that his only
aspiration was to a felicity so high that it seemed almost
unrealizable on this earth.
She coloured invisibly, with a warmth against which the breeze
from the sierra seemed to have lost its cooling power in the
sudden melting of the snows. His whisper could not have carried
so far, though there was enough ardour in his tone to melt a
heart of ice. Antonia turned away abruptly, as if to carry his
whispered assurance into the room behind, full of light, noisy
with voices.
The tide of political speculation was beating high within the
four walls of the great sala, as if driven beyond the marks by a
great gust of hope. Don Juste's fan-shaped beard was still the
centre of loud and animated discussions. There was a
self-confident ring in all the voices. Even the few Europeans
around Charles Gould--a Dane, a couple of Frenchmen, a discreet
fat German, smiling, with down-cast eyes, the representatives of
those material interests that had got a footing in Sulaco under
the protecting might of the San Tome mine--had infused a lot of
good humour into their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they
were paying their court, was the visible sign of the stability
that could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolutions.
They felt hopeful about their various undertakings. One of the
two Frenchmen, small, black, with glittering eyes lost in an
immense growth of bushy beard, waved his tiny brown hands and
delicate wrists. He had been travelling in the interior of the
province for a syndicate of European capitalists. His forcible
"Monsieur l' Administrateur" returning every minute shrilled
above the steady hum of conversations. He was relating his
discoveries. He was ecstatic. Charles Gould glanced down at him
courteously.
At a given moment of these necessary receptions it was Mrs.
Gould's habit to withdraw quietly into a little drawing-room,
especially her own, next to the great sala. She had risen, and,
waiting for Antonia, listened with a slightly worried
graciousness to the engineer-in-chief of the railway, who stooped
over her, relating slowly, without the slightest gesture,
something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a humorous
twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the room to join Mrs.
Gould, turned her head over her shoulder towards Decoud, only for
a moment.
"Why should any one of us think his aspirations unrealizable?"
she said, rapidly.
"I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia," he answered,
through clenched teeth, then bowed very low, a little distantly.
The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his amusing story.
The humours of railway building in South America appealed to his
keen appreciation of the absurd, and he told his instances of
ignorant prejudice and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs.
Gould gave him all her attention as he walked by her side
escorting the ladies out of the room. Finally all three passed
unnoticed through the glass doors in the gallery. Only a tall
priest stalking silently in the noise of the sala checked himself
to look after them. Father Corbelan, whom Decoud had seen from
the balcony turning into the gateway of the Casa Gould, had
addressed no one since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane
accentuated the tallness of his stature; he carried his powerful
torso thrown forward; and the straight, black bar of his joined
eyebrows, the pugnacious outline of the bony face, the white spot
of a scar on the bluish shaven cheeks (a testimonial to his
apostolic zeal from a party of unconverted Indians), suggested
something unlawful behind his priesthood, the idea of a chaplain
of bandits.
He separated his bony, knotted hands clasped behind his back, to
shake his finger at Martin.
Decoud had stepped into the room after Antonia. But he did not
go far. He had remained just within, against the curtain, with an
expression of not quite genuine gravity, like a grown-up person
taking part in a game of children. He gazed quietly at the
threatening finger.
"I have watched your reverence converting General Barrios by a
special sermon on the Plaza," he said, without making the
slightest movement.
"What miserable nonsense!" Father Corbelan's deep voice resounded
all over the room, making all the heads turn on the shoulders.
"The man is a drunkard. Senores, the God of your General is a
bottle!"
His contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy suspension of
every sound, as if the self-confidence of the gathering had been
staggered by a blow. But nobody took up Father Corbelan's
declaration.
It was known that Father Corbelan had come out of the wilds to
advocate the sacred rights of the Church with the same fanatical
fearlessness with which he had gone preaching to bloodthirsty
savages, devoid of human compassion or worship of any kind.
Rumours of legendary proportions told of his successes as a
missionary beyond the eye of Christian men. He had baptized whole
nations of Indians, living with them like a savage himself. It
was related that the padre used to ride with his Indians for
days, half naked, carrying a bullock-hide shield, and, no doubt,
a long lance, too--who knows? That he had wandered clothed in
skins, seeking for proselytes somewhere near the snow line of the
Cordillera. Of these exploits Padre Corbelan himself was never
known to talk. But he made no secret of his opinion that the
politicians of Sta. Marta had harder hearts and more corrupt
minds than the heathen to whom he had carried the word of God.
His injudicious zeal for the temporal welfare of the Church was
damaging the Ribierist cause. It was common knowledge that he had
refused to be made titular bishop of the Occidental diocese till
justice was done to a despoiled Church. The political Gefe of
Sulaco (the same dignitary whom Captain Mitchell saved from the
mob afterwards) hinted with naive cynicism that doubtless their
Excellencies the Ministers sent the padre over the mountains to
Sulaco in the worst season of the year in the hope that he would
be frozen to death by the icy blasts of the high paramos. Every
year a few hardy muleteers--men inured to exposure--were known to
perish in that way. But what would you have? Their Excellencies
possibly had not realized what a tough priest he was. Meantime,
the ignorant were beginning to murmur that the Ribierist reforms
meant simply the taking away of the land from the people. Some
of it was to be given to foreigners who made the railway; the
greater part was to go to the padres.
These were the results of the Grand Vicar's zeal. Even from the
short allocution to the troops on the Plaza (which only the first
ranks could have heard) he had not been able to keep out his
fixed idea of an outraged Church waiting for reparation from a
penitent country. The political Gefe had been exasperated. But
he could not very well throw the brother-in-law of Don Jose into
the prison of the Cabildo. The chief magistrate, an easy-going
and popular official, visited the Casa Gould, walking over after
sunset from the Intendencia, unattended, acknowledging with
dignified courtesy the salutations of high and low alike. That
evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gould and had hissed
out to him that he would have liked to deport the Grand Vicar out
of Sulaco, anywhere, to some desert island, to the Isabels, for
instance. "The one without water preferably--eh, Don Carlos?" he
had added in a tone between jest and earnest. This uncontrollable
priest, who had rejected his offer of the episcopal palace for a
residence and preferred to hang his shabby hammock amongst the
rubble and spiders of the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had
taken into his head to advocate an unconditional pardon for
Hernandez the Robber! And this was not enough; he seemed to have
entered into communication with the most audacious criminal the
country had known for years. The Sulaco police knew, of course,
what was going on. Padre Corbelan had got hold of that reckless
Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores, the only man fit for such an
errand, and had sent a message through him. Father Corbelan had
studied in Rome, and could speak Italian. The Capataz was known
to visit the old Dominican Convent at night. An old woman who
served the Grand Vicar had heard the name of Hernandez
pronounced; and only last Saturday afternoon the Capataz had been
observed galloping out of town. He did not return for two days.
The police would have laid the Italian by the heels if it had not
been for fear of the Cargadores, a turbulent body of men, quite
apt to raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern
Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the money in
the pockets of the railway workmen. The populace was made
restless by Father Corbelan's discourses. And the first
magistrate explained to Charles Gould that now the province was
stripped of troops any outbreak of lawlessness would find the
authorities with their boots off, as it were.
Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair, smoking a long,
thin cigar, not very far from Don Jose, with whom, bending over
sideways, he exchanged a few words from time to time. He ignored
the entrance of the priest, and whenever Father Corbelan's voice
was raised behind him, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
Father Corbelan had remained quite motionless for a time with
that something vengeful in his immobility which seemed to
characterize all his attitudes. A lurid glow of strong
convictions gave its peculiar aspect to the black figure. But its
fierceness became softened as the padre, fixing his eyes upon
Decoud, raised his long, black arm slowly, impressively--
"And you--you are a perfect heathen," he said, in a subdued, deep
voice.
He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the young man's
breast. Decoud, very calm, felt the wall behind the curtain with
the back of his head. Then, with his chin tilted well up, he
smiled.
"Very well," he agreed with the slightly weary nonchalance of a
man well used to these passages. "But is it perhaps that you have
not discovered yet what is the God of my worship? It was an
easier task with our Barrios."
The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement. "You believe
neither in stick nor stone," he said.
"Nor bottle," added Decoud without stirring. "Neither does the
other of your reverence's confidants. I mean the Capataz of the
Cargadores. He does not drink. Your reading of my character does
honour to your perspicacity. But why call me a heathen?"
"True," retorted the priest. "You are ten times worse. A miracle
could not convert you."
"I certainly do not believe in miracles," said Decoud, quietly.
Father Corbelan shrugged his high, broad shoulders doubtfully.
"A sort of Frenchman--godless--a materialist," he pronounced
slowly, as if weighing the terms of a careful analysis. "Neither
the son of his own country nor of any other," he continued,
thoughtfully.
"Scarcely human, in fact," Decoud commented under his breath, his
head at rest against the wall, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling.
"The victim of this faithless age," Father Corbelan resumed in a
deep but subdued voice.
"But of some use as a journalist." Decoud changed his pose and
spoke in a more animated tone. "Has your worship neglected to
read the last number of the Porvenir? I assure you it is just
like the others. On the general policy it continues to call
Montero a gran' bestia, and stigmatize his brother, the
guerrillero, for a combination of lackey and spy. What could be
more effective? In local affairs it urges the Provincial
Government to enlist bodily into the national army the band of
Hernandez the Robber--who is apparently the protege of the
Church--or at least of the Grand Vicar. Nothing could be more
sound."
The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his square-toed
shoes with big steel buckles. Again, with his hands clasped
behind his back, he paced to and fro, planting his feet firmly.
When he swung about, the skirt of his soutane was inflated
slightly by the brusqueness of his movements.
The great sala had been emptying itself slowly. When the Gefe
Politico rose to go, most of those still remaining stood up
suddenly in sign of respect, and Don Jose Avellanos stopped the
rocking of his chair. But the good-natured First Official made a
deprecatory gesture, waved his hand to Charles Gould, and went
out discreetly.
In the comparative peace of the room the screaming "Monsieur
l'Administrateur" of the frail, hairy Frenchman seemed to acquire
a preternatural shrillness. The explorer of the Capitalist
syndicate was still enthusiastic. "Ten million dollars' worth of
copper practically in sight, Monsieur l'Administrateur. Ten
millions in sight! And a railway coming--a railway! They will
never believe my report. C'est trop beau." He fell a prey to a
screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely nodding heads, before
Charles Gould's imperturbable calm.
And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging round the
skirt of his soutane at each end of his beat. Decoud murmured to
him ironically: "Those gentlemen talk about their gods."
Father Corbelan stopped short, looked at the journalist of Sulaco
fixedly for a moment, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and
resumed his plodding walk of an obstinate traveller.
And now the Europeans were dropping off from the group around
Charles Gould till the Administrador of the Great Silver Mine
could be seen in his whole lank length, from head to foot, left
stranded by the ebbing tide of his guests on the great square of
carpet, as it were a multi-coloured shoal of flowers and
arabesques under his brown boots. Father Corbelan approached the
rocking-chair of Don Jose Avellanos.
"Come, brother," he said, with kindly brusqueness and a touch of
relieved impatience a man may feel at the end of a perfectly
useless ceremony. "A la Casa! A la Casa! This has been all talk.
Let us now go and think and pray for guidance from Heaven."
He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the frail
diplomatist--the life and soul of the party--he seemed gigantic,
with a gleam of fanaticism in the glance. But the voice of the
party, or, rather, its mouthpiece, the "son Decoud" from Paris,
turned journalist for the sake of Antonia's eyes, knew very well
that it was not so, that he was only a strenuous priest with one
idea, feared by the women and execrated by the men of the people.
Martin Decoud, the dilettante in life, imagined himself to derive
an artistic pleasure from watching the picturesque extreme of
wrongheadedness into which an honest, almost sacred, conviction
may drive a man. "It is like madness. It must be--because it's
self-destructive," Decoud had said to himself often. It seemed to
him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned
into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to
destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with
the zest of a connoisseur in the art of his choice. Those two men
got on well together, as if each had felt respectively that a
masterful conviction, as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man
very far on the by-paths of political action.
Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. Decoud followed
out the brothers-in-law. And there remained only one visitor in
the vast empty sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a
heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man, with a drooping moustache, a hide
merchant from Esmeralda, who had come overland to Sulaco, riding
with a few peons across the coast range. He was very full of his
journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose of seeing the Senor
Administrador of San Tome in relation to some assistance he
required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to enlarge it
greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was
going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a
strange, anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language,
which he pattered rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A
plain man could carry on his little business now in the country,
and even think of enlarging it--with safety. Was it not so? He
seemed to beg Charles Gould for a confirmatory word, a grunt of
assent, a simple nod even.
He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he
would dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he
would branch off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his
journey. The audacious Hernandez, leaving his usual haunts, had
crossed the Campo of Sulaco, and was known to be lurking in the
ravines of the coast range. Yesterday, when distant only a few
hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant and his servants had seen
three men on the road arrested suspiciously, with their horses'
heads together. Two of these rode off at once and disappeared in
a shallow quebrada to the left. "We stopped," continued the man
from Esmeralda, "and I tried to hide behind a small bush. But
none of my mozos would go forward to find out what it meant, and
the third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was
no use. We had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling. He
let us pass--a man on a grey horse with his hat down on his
eyes--without a word of greeting; but by-and-by we heard him
galloping after us. We faced about, but that did not seem to
intimidate him. He rode up at speed, and touching my foot with
the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling
laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand back to
reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his
waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and
as he did not offer to go on we dared not move. At last, blowing
the smoke of my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said,
'Senor, it would be perhaps better for you if I rode behind your
party. You are not very far from Sulaco now. Go you with God.'
What would you? We went on. There was no resisting him. He might
have been Hernandez himself; though my servant, who has been many
times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he had recognized him
very well for the Capataz of the Steamship Company's Cargadores.
Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the corner of
the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup
with her hand on the grey horse's mane."
"I assure you, Senor Hirsch," murmured Charles Gould, "that you
ran no risk on this occasion."
"That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most fierce man--to
look at. And what does it mean? A person employed by the
Steamship Company talking with salteadores--no less, senor; the
other horsemen were salteadores--in a lonely place, and behaving
like a robber himself! A cigar is nothing, but what was there to
prevent him asking me for my purse?"
"No, no, Senor Hirsch," Charles Gould murmured, letting his
glance stray away a little vacantly from the round face, with its
hooked beak upturned towards him in an almost childlike appeal.
"If it was the Capataz de Cargadores you met--and there is no
doubt, is there? --you were perfectly safe."
"Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-looking man, Don
Carlos. He asked me for a cigar in a most familiar manner. What
would have happened if I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What
business had he to be talking with robbers in a lonely place?"
But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave not a sign, made
no sound. The impenetrability of the embodied Gould Concession
had its surface shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction;
but the King of Sulaco had words enough to give him all the
mysterious weight of a taciturn force. His silences, backed by
the power of speech, had as many shades of significance as
uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt, of negation--even
of simple comment. Some seemed to say plainly, "Think it over";
others meant clearly, "Go ahead"; a simple, low "I see," with an
affirmative nod, at the end of a patient listening half-hour was
the equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned to
trust implicitly, since behind it all there was the great San
Tome mine, the head and front of the material interests, so
strong that it depended on no man's goodwill in the whole length
and breadth of the Occidental Province--that is, on no goodwill
which it could not buy ten times over. But to the little
hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about the export of hides,
the silence of Charles Gould portended a failure. Evidently this
was no time for extending a modest man's business. He enveloped
in a swift mental malediction the whole country, with all its
inhabitants, partisans of Ribiera and Montero alike; and there
were incipient tears in his mute anger at the thought of the
innumerable ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy expanse of
the Campo, with its single palms rising like ships at sea within
the perfect circle of the horizon, its clumps of heavy timber
motionless like solid islands of leaves above the running waves
of grass. There were hides there, rotting, with no profit to
anybody--rotting where they had been dropped by men called away
to attend the urgent necessities of political revolutions. The
practical, mercantile soul of Senor Hirsch rebelled against all
that foolishness, while he was taking a respectful but
disconcerted leave of the might and majesty of the San Tome mine
in the person of Charles Gould. He could not restrain a
heart-broken murmur, wrung out of his very aching heart, as it
were.
"It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this. The
price of hides in Hamburg is gone up--up. Of course the Ribierist
Government will do away with all that--when it gets established
firmly. Meantime--"
He sighed.
"Yes, meantime," repeated Charles Gould, inscrutably.
The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not ready to go yet.
There was a little matter he would like to mention very much if
permitted. It appeared he had some good friends in Hamburg (he
murmured the name of the firm) who were very anxious to do
business, in dynamite, he explained. A contract for dynamite with
the San Tome mine, and then, perhaps, later on, other mines,
which were sure to--The little man from Esmeralda was ready to
enlarge, but Charles interrupted him. It seemed as though the
patience of the Senor Administrador was giving way at last.
"Senor Hirsch," he said, "I have enough dynamite stored up at the
mountain to send it down crashing into the valley"--his voice
rose a little--"to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked."
Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of the dealer in
hides, who was murmuring hastily, "Just so. Just so." And now he
was going. It was impossible to do business in explosives with an
Administrador so well provided and so discouraging. He had
suffered agonies in the saddle and had exposed himself to the
atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for nothing at all. Neither
hides nor dynamite--and the very shoulders of the enterprising
Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low to the
engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio
he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an
attitude of meditative astonishment.
"What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?" he muttered.
"And why does he talk like this to me?"
The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala,
whence the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant
drop, nodded familiarly to the master of the house, standing
motionless like a tall beacon amongst the deserted shoals of
furniture.
"Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs. The railway
will know where to go for dynamite should we get short at any
time. We have done cutting and chopping for a while now. We shall
begin soon to blast our way through."
"Don't come to me," said Charles Gould, with perfect serenity. "I
shan't have an ounce to spare for anybody. Not an ounce. Not for
my own brother, if I had a brother, and he were the
engineer-in-chief of the most promising railway in the world."
"What's that?" asked the engineer-in-chief, with equanimity.
"Unkindness?"
"No," said Charles Gould, stolidly. "Policy."
"Radical, I should think," the engineer-in-chief observed from
the doorway.
"Is that the right name?" Charles Gould said, from the middle of
the room.
"I mean, going to the roots, you know," the engineer explained,
with an air of enjoyment.
"Why, yes," Charles pronounced, slowly. "The Gould Concession has
struck such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that
gorge of the mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be
allowed to dislodge it from there. It's my choice. It's my last
card to play."
The engineer-in-chief whistled low. "A pretty game," he said,
with a shade of discretion. "And have you told Holroyd of that
extraordinary trump card you hold in your hand?"
"Card only when it's played; when it falls at the end of the
game. Till then you may call it a--a--"
"Weapon," suggested the railway man.
"No. You may call it rather an argument," corrected Charles
Gould, gently. "And that's how I've presented it to Mr. Holroyd."
"And what did he say to it?" asked the engineer, with undisguised
interest.
"He"--Charles Gould spoke after a slight pause--"he said
something about holding on like grim death and putting our trust
in God. I should imagine he must have been rather startled. But
then"--pursued the Administrador of the San Tome mine--"but then,
he is very far away, you know, and, as they say in this country,
God is very high above."
The engineer's appreciative laugh died away down the stairs,
where the Madonna with the Child on her arm seemed to look after
his shaking broad back from her shallow niche. _
Read next: PART SECOND - THE ISABELS: CHAPTER VI
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