________________________________________________
_ DURING the night the expectant populace had taken possession of
all the belfries in the town in order to welcome Pedrito Montero,
who was making his entry after having slept the night in Rincon.
And first came straggling in through the land gate the armed mob
of all colours, complexions, types, and states of raggedness,
calling themselves the Sulaco National Guard, and commanded by
Senor Gamacho. Through the middle of the street streamed, like a
torrent of rubbish, a mass of straw hats, ponchos, gun-barrels,
with an enormous green and yellow flag flapping in their midst,
in a cloud of dust, to the furious beating of drums. The
spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses shouting
their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be seen the lances of the
cavalry, the "army" of Pedro Montero. He advanced between
Senores Fuentes and Gamacho at the head of his llaneros, who had
accomplished the feat of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in
a snow-storm. They rode four abreast, mounted on confiscated
Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous stock of roadside stores
they had looted hurriedly in their rapid ride through the
northern part of the province; for Pedro Montero had been in a
great hurry to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely
around their bare throats were glaringly new, and all the right
sleeves of their cotton shirts had been cut off close to the
shoulder for greater freedom in throwing the lazo. Emaciated
greybeards rode by the side of lean dark youths, marked by all
the hardships of campaigning, with strips of raw beef twined round
the crowns of their hats, and huge iron spurs fastened to their
naked heels. Those that in the passes of the mountain had lost
their lances had provided themselves with the goads used by the
Campo cattlemen: slender shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with
a lot of loose rings jingling under the ironshod point. They were
armed with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessness
characterized the expression of all these sun-blacked
countenances; they glared down haughtily with their scorched eyes
at the crowd, or, blinking upwards insolently, pointed out to
each other some particular head amongst the women at the windows.
When they had ridden into the Plaza and caught sight of the
equestrian statue of the King dazzlingly white in the sunshine,
towering enormous and motionless above the surges of the crowd,
with its eternal gesture of saluting, a murmur of surprise ran
through their ranks. "What is that saint in the big hat?" they
asked each other.
They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains with which
Pedro Montero had helped so much the victorious career of his
brother the general. The influence which that man, brought up in
coast towns, acquired in a short time over the plainsmen of the
Republic can be ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so
effective a kind that it must have appeared to those violent men
but little removed from a state of utter savagery, as the
perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular lore of all
nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, together with
bodily strength, were looked upon, even more than courage, as
heroic virtues by primitive mankind. To overcome your adversary
was the great affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But
the use of intelligence awakened wonder and respect. Stratagems,
providing they did not fail, were honourable; the easy massacre
of an unsuspecting enemy evoked no feelings but those of
gladness, pride, and admiration. Not perhaps that primitive men
were more faithless than their descendants of to-day, but that
they went straighter to their aim, and were more artless in their
recognition of success as the only standard of morality.
We have changed since. The use of intelligence awakens little
wonder and less respect. But the ignorant and barbarous plainsmen
engaging in civil strife followed willingly a leader who often
managed to deliver their enemies bound, as it were, into their
hands. Pedro Montero had a talent for lulling his adversaries
into a sense of security. And as men learn wisdom with extreme
slowness, and are always ready to believe promises that flatter
their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful time after time.
Whether only a servant or some inferior official in the
Costaguana Legation in Paris, he had rushed back to his country
directly he heard that his brother had emerged from the obscurity
of his frontier commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his
gift of plausibility the chiefs of the Ribierist movement in the
capital, and even the acute agent of the San Tome mine had failed
to understand him thoroughly. At once he had obtained an
enormous influence over his brother. They were very much alike in
appearance, both bald, with bunches of crisp hair above their
ears, arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro was
smaller than the general, more delicate altogether, with an
ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward signs of
refinement and distinction, and with a parrot-like talent for
languages. Both brothers had received some elementary instruction
by the munificence of a great European traveller, to whom their
father had been a body-servant during his journeys in the
interior of the country. In General Montero's case it enabled him
to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger, incorrigibly lazy
and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from one coast town to
another, hanging about counting-houses, attaching himself to
strangers as a sort of valet-de-place, picking up an easy and
disreputable living. His ability to read did nothing for him but
fill his head with absurd visions. His actions were usually
determined by motives so improbable in themselves as to escape
the penetration of a rational person.
Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession in Sta.
Marta had credited him with the possession of sane views, and
even with a restraining power over the general's everlastingly
discontented vanity. It could never have entered his head that
Pedrito Montero, lackey or inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets
of the various Parisian hotels where the Costaguana Legation used
to shelter its diplomatic dignity, had been devouring the lighter
sort of historical works in the French language, such, for
instance as the books of Imbert de Saint Amand upon the Second
Empire. But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a
brilliant court, and had conceived the idea of an existence for
himself where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the
command of every pleasure with the conduct of political affairs
and enjoy power supremely in every way. Nobody could have guessed
that. And yet this was one of the immediate causes of the
Monterist Revolution. This will appear less incredible by the
reflection that the fundamental causes were the same as ever,
rooted in the political immaturity of the people, in the
indolence of the upper classes and the mental darkness of the
lower.
Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother the road wide
open to his wildest imaginings. This was what made the Monterist
pronunciamiento so unpreventable. The general himself probably
could have been bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched
on a diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who had
egged him on from first to last. He wanted to become the most
brilliant statesman of South America. He did not desire supreme
power. He would have been afraid of its labour and risk, in fact.
Before all, Pedrito Montero, taught by his European experience,
meant to acquire a serious fortune for himself. With this object
in view he obtained from his brother, on the very morrow of the
successful battle, the permission to push on over the mountains
and take possession of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land of future
prosperity, the chosen land of material progress, the only
province in the Republic of interest to European capitalists.
Pedrito Montero, following the example of the Duc de Morny, meant
to have his share of this prosperity. This is what he meant
literally. Now his brother was master of the country, whether as
President, Dictator, or even as Emperor--why not as an
Emperor?--he meant to demand a share in every enterprise--in
railways, in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land
companies, in each and every undertaking--as the price of his
protection. The desire to be on the spot early was the real cause
of the celebrated ride over the mountains with some two hundred
llaneros, an enterprise of which the dangers had not appeared at
first clearly to his impatience. Coming from a series of
victories, it seemed to him that a Montero had only to appear to
be master of the situation. This illusion had betrayed him into a
rashness of which he was becoming aware. As he rode at the head
of his llaneros he regretted that there were so few of them. The
enthusiasm of the populace reassured him. They yelled "Viva
Montero! Viva Pedrito!" In order to make them still more
enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had in
dissembling, he dropped the reins on his horse's neck, and with a
tremendous effect of familiarity and confidence slipped his hands
under the arms of Senores Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture,
with a ragged town mozo holding his horse by the bridle, he rode
triumphantly across the Plaza to the door of the Intendencia. Its
old gloomy walls seemed to shake in the acclamations that rent
the air and covered the crashing peals of the cathedral bells.
Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dismounted into a
shouting and perspiring throng of enthusiasts whom the ragged
Nationals were pushing back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he
surveyed the large crowd gaping at him. and the bullet-speckled
walls of the houses opposite lightly veiled by a sunny haze of
dust. The word "PORVENIR" in immense black capitals, alternating
with broken windows, stared at him across the vast space; and he
thought with delight of the hour of vengeance, because he was
very sure of laying his hands upon Decoud. On his left hand,
Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face, uncovered a set
of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilarity. On his right,
Senor Fuentes, small and lean, looked on with compressed lips.
The crowd stared literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness,
as though they had expected the great guerrillero, the famous
Pedrito, to begin scattering at once some sort of visible
largesse. What he began was a speech. He began it with the
shouted word "Citizens!" which reached even those in the middle
of the Plaza. Afterwards the greater part of the citizens
remained fascinated by the orator's action alone, his tip-toeing,
the arms flung above his head with the fists clenched, a hand
laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of rolling eyes, the
sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, a hand laid familiarly on
Gamacho's shoulder; a hand waved formally towards the little
black-coated person of Senor Fuentes, advocate and politician and
a true friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the
orator bursting out suddenly propagated themselves irregularly to
the confines of the crowd, like flames running over dry grass,
and expired in the opening of the streets. In the intervals, over
the swarming Plaza brooded a heavy silence, in which the mouth of
the orator went on opening and shutting, and detached
phrases--"The happiness of the people," "Sons of the country,"
"The entire world, el mundo entiero"--reached even the packed
steps of the cathedral with a feeble clear ring, thin as the
buzzing of a mosquito. But the orator struck his breast; he
seemed to prance between his two supporters. It was the supreme
effort of his peroration. Then the two smaller figures
disappeared from the public gaze and the enormous Gamacho, left
alone, advanced, raising his hat high above his head. Then he
covered himself proudly and yelled out, "Ciudadanos!" A dull roar
greeted Senor Gamacho, ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of the
National Guards.
Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from one wrecked
room of the Intendencia to another, snarling incessantly--
"What stupidity! What destruction!"
Senor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn disposition to
murmur--
"It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;" and then,
inclining his head on his left shoulder, would press together his
lips so firmly that a little hollow would appear at each corner.
He had his nomination for Political Chief of the town in his
pocket, and was all impatience to enter upon his functions.
In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all starred by
stones, the hangings torn down and the canopy over the platform
at the upper end pulled to pieces, the vast, deep muttering of
the crowd and the howling voice of Gamacho speaking just below
reached them through the shutters as they stood idly in dimness
and desolation.
"The brute!" observed his Excellency Don Pedro Montero through
clenched teeth. "We must contrive as quickly as possible to send
him and his Nationals out there to fight Hernandez."
The new Gefe Politico only jerked his head sideways, and took a
puff at his cigarette in sign of his agreement with this method
for ridding the town of Gamacho and his inconvenient rabble.
Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely bare floor,
and at the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames running round the
room, out of which the remnants of torn and slashed canvases
fluttered like dingy rags.
"We are not barbarians," he said.
This was what said his Excellency, the popular Pedrito, the
guerrillero skilled in the art of laying ambushes, charged by his
brother at his own demand with the organization of Sulaco on
democratic principles. The night before, during the consultation
with his partisans, who had come out to meet him in Rincon, he
had opened his intentions to Senor Fuentes--
"We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, confiding the
destinies of our beloved country to the wisdom and valiance of my
heroic brother, the invincible general. A plebiscite. Do you
understand?"
And Senor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks, had inclined
his head slightly to the left, letting a thin, bluish jet of
smoke escape through his pursed lips. He had understood.
His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation. Not a single
chair, table, sofa, etagere or console had been left in the state
rooms of the Intendencia. His Excellency, though twitching all
over with rage, was restrained from bursting into violence by a
sense of his remoteness and isolation. His heroic brother was
very far away. Meantime, how was he going to take his siesta? He
had expected to find comfort and luxury in the Intendencia after
a year of hard camp life, ending with the hardships and
privations of the daring dash upon Sulaco--upon the province
which was worth more in wealth and influence than all the rest of
the Republic's territory. He would get even with Gamacho
by-and-by. And Senor Gamacho's oration, delectable to popular
ears, went on in the heat and glare of the Plaza like the uncouth
howlings of an inferior sort of devil cast into a white-hot
furnace. Every moment he had to wipe his streaming face with his
bare fore-arm; he had flung off his coat, and had turned up the
sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but he kept on his
head the large cocked hat with white plumes. His ingenuousness
cherished this sign of his rank as Commandante of the National
Guards. Approving and grave murmurs greeted his periods. His
opinion was that war should be declared at once against France,
England, Germany, and the United States, who, by introducing
railways, mining enterprises, colonization, and under such other
shallow pretences, aimed at robbing poor people of their lands,
and with the help of these Goths and paralytics, the aristocrats
would convert them into toiling and miserable slaves. And the
leperos, flinging about the corners of their dirty white mantas,
yelled their approbation. General Montero, Gamacho howled with
conviction, was the only man equal to the patriotic task. They
assented to that, too.
The morning was wearing on; there were already signs of
disruption, currents and eddies in the crowd. Some were seeking
the shade of the walls and under the trees of the Alameda.
Horsemen spurred through, shouting; groups of sombreros set level
on heads against the vertical sun were drifting away into the
streets, where the open doors of pulperias revealed an enticing
gloom resounding with the gentle tinkling of guitars. The
National Guards were thinking of siesta, and the eloquence of
Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on, when, in the
cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried to assemble again for
further consideration of public affairs, detachments of Montero's
cavalry camped on the Alameda charged them without parley, at
speed, with long lances levelled at their flying backs as far as
the ends of the streets. The National Guards of Sulaco were
surprised by this proceeding. But they were not indignant. No
Costaguanero had ever learned to question the eccentricities of a
military force. They were part of the natural order of things.
This must be, they concluded, some kind of administrative
measure, no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their unaided
intelligence, and their chief and orator, Gamacho, Commandante of
the National Guard, was lying drunk and asleep in the bosom of
his family. His bare feet were upturned in the shadows
repulsively, in the manner of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had
dropped open. His youngest daughter, scratching her head with one
hand, with the other waved a green bough over his scorched and
peeling face. _
Read next: PART THIRD - THE LIGHTHOUSE: CHAPTER VI
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