Section 16

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‘Year Mandate of regeneration. The petition, like everything else, had found its way into Don José’s hands. He had showed to Mrs. Gould these pages of dirty-greyish rough paper (perhaps looted in some village store), covered with the crabbed, illiterate hand- writing of the old padre, carried off from his hut by the side of a mud-walled church to be the secretary of the dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamp- light of the Gould drawing-room over the document containing the fierce and yet humble appeal of the man against the blind and stupid barbarity turning an hon- est ranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest stated that, but for being deprived of his liberty for ten days, he had been treated with humanity and the respect due to his sacred calling. He had been, it ap- pears, confessing and absolving the chief and most of the band, and he guaranteed the sincerity of their good disposition. He had distributed heavy penances, no doubt in the way of litanies and fasts; but he argued shrewdly that it would be difficult for them to make their peace with God durably till they had made peace with men.
_ Never before, perhaps, had Hernandez’s head been in less jeopardy than when he petitioned humbly for permission to buy a pardon for himself and his gang of deserters by armed service. He could range afar from the waste lands protecting his fastness, unchecked, be- cause there were no troops left in the whole province. The usual garrison of Sulaco had gone south to the war, with its brass band playing the Bolivar march on the bridge of one of the O.S.N. Company’s steamers. The great family coaches drawn up along the shore of the harbour were made to rock on the high leathern springs by the enthusiasm of the sefioras and the sefioritas standing up to wave their lace handkerchiefs, as lighter
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after lighter packed full of troops left the end of the _ jetty.
Peaneronie directed the embarkation, under the super- intendendence of Captain Mitchell, red-faced in the sun, conspicuous in a white waistcoat, representing the allied and anxious goodwill of all the material interests of civilization. General Barrios, who commanded the _ troops, assured Don José on parting that in three weeks
he would have Montero in a wooden cage drawn by _ three pair of oxen ready for a tour through allthe towns of the Republic.
“And then, sefiora,” he continued, baring his curly iron-grey head to Mrs. Gould in her landau—“and then, sefiora, we shall convert our swords into plough- shares and grow rich. Even I, myself, as soon as this little business is settled, shall open a fundacion on some land I have on the llanos and try to make a little money in peace and quietness. Sefiora, you know, all Costa- guana knows—what do JI say?—this whole South American continent knows, that Pablo Barrios has had his fill of military glory.”
Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and patriotic send-off. It was not his part to see the soldiers embark. It was neither his part, nor his inclination, nor his policy. His part, his inclination, and his policy were united in one endeavour to keep unchecked ‘the flow of treasure he had started single-handed from the re-opened scar in the flank of the mountain. As the mine developed he had trained for himself some native help. There were foremen, artificers and clerks, with Don Pépé for the gobernador of the mining population. For the rest his shoulders alone sustained the whole weight of the “Imperium in Imperio,” the great Gould Concession whose mere shadow had been enough to crush the life out of his father.
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- Mrs. Gould had no silver mine to look after. In the general life of the Gould Concession she was represented by her two lieutenants, the doctor and the priest, but she fed her woman’s love of excitement on events whose significance was purified to her by the fire of her imaginative purpose. On that day she had brought the Avellanos, father and daughter, down to the harbour with her. .
Amongst his other activities of that stirring time, Don José had become the chairman of a Patriotic Com- mittee which had armed a great proportion of troops in the Sulaco command with an improved model of a mili- tary rifle. It had been just discarded for something still more deadly by one of the great European powers. How much of the market-price for second-hand weapons was covered by the voluntary contributions of the principal families, and how much came from those funds Don José was understood to command abroad, remained a secret which he alone could have disclosed; ‘but the Ricos, as the populace called them, had con- tributed under the pressure of their Nestor’s eloquence. Some of the more enthusiastic ladies had been moved to bring offerings of jewels into the hands of the man who was the life and soul of the party.
There were moments when both his life and his soul seemed overtaxed by so many years of undiscouraged belief in regeneration. He appeared almost inanimate, sitting rigidly by the side of Mrs. Gould in the landau, with his fine, old, clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as if modelled in yellow wax, shaded by a soft felt hat, the dark eyes looking out fixedly. Antonia, the beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avellanos was called in Sulaco, leaned back, facing them; and her full figure, the grave oval of her face with full red lips, made her look more mature than Mrs. Gould, with her mobile ex-
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pression and small, erect person under a slightly swaying sunshade.
Whenever possible Antonia attended her father; her recognized devotion weakened the shocking effect of her scorn for the rigid conventions regulating the life of Spanish-American girlhood. And, in truth, she was no longer girlish. It was said that she often wrote State papers from her father’s dictation, and was allowed to read all the books in his library. At the receptions— where the situation was saved by the presence of a very decrepit old lady (a relation of the Corbelans), quite deaf and motionless in an armchair—Antonia could hold her own in a discussion with two or three men at a time. Obviously she was not the girl to be content with peeping through a barred window at a cloaked figure of a lover ensconced in a doorway opposite— which is the correct form of Costaguana courtship. It was generally believed that with her foreign upbringing and foreign ideas the learned and proud Antonia would never marry—unless, indeed, she married a foreigner from Europe or North America, now that Sulaco seemed on the point of being invaded by all the world.
CHAPTER THREE
Wuen General Barrios stopped to address Mrs. Gould, Antonia raised negligently her hand holding an open fan, as if to shade from the sun her head, wrapped in a light lace shawl. The clear gleam of her blue eyes gliding behind the black fringe of eyelashes paused for a moment upon her father, then travelled further to the figure of a young man of thirty at most, of medium height, rather thick-set, wearing a light overcoat. Bearing down with the open palm of his hand upon the knob of a flexible cane, he had been looking on from a distance; but directly he saw himself noticed, he ap- proached quietly and put his elbow over the door of the landau.
The shirt collar, cut low in the neck, the big bow of his cravat, the style of his clothing, from the round hat to the varnished shoes, suggested an idea of French elegance; but otherwise he was the very type of a fair Spanish creole. The fluffy moustache and the short, curly, golden beard did not conceal his lips, rosy, fresh, almost pouting in expression. His full, round face was of that warm, healthy creole white which is never tanned by its native sunshine. Martin Decoud was seldom exposed to the Costaguana sun under which he was born. His people had been long settled in Paris, where he had studied law, had dabbled in literature, had hoped now and then in moments of exaltation to be- come a poet like that other foreigner of Spanish blood, José Maria Herédia. In other moments he had, to pass the time, condescended: to write articles on European
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affairs for the Semenario, the principal newspaper in Sta. Marta, which printed them under the heading “From our special correspondent,” though the author- ship was an open secret. Everybody in Costaguana, where the tale of compatriots in Europe is jealously kept, knew that it was “‘the son Decoud,” a talented young man, supposed to be moving in the higher spheres of Society. As a matter of fact, he was an idle boulevardier, in touch with some smart journalists, made free of a few newspaper offices, and welcomed in the pleasure haunts of pressmen. This life, whose dreary superficiality is covered by the glitter of univer- sal blague, like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by the spangles of a motley costume, induced in him a Frenchified—but most un-French—cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren indifferentism posing as intellec- _tual superiority. Of his own country he used to say to his French. associates: “Imagine an atmosphere of opera-bouffe in which all the comic business of stage’ statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all their farcical stealing, intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead earnest. It is screamingly funny, the blood flows all the time, and the actors believe themselves to be influencing the fate of the universe. Of course, government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind; but really we Spanish-Americans do overstep the bounds. No man of ordinary intelli- gence can take part in the intrigues of une farce macabre. However, these Ribierists, of whom we hear so much just now, are really trying in their own comical way to make the country habitable, and even to pay some of its debts. My friends, you had better write up Sefior Ribiera all you can in kindness to your own bondholders. Really, if what I am told in my letters is true, there is some chance for them at last.” .
rave F, Peete, Sete ee |
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And he would explain with railing verve what Don Vincente Ribiera stood for—a mournful little man op- pressed by his own good intentions, the significance of battles won, who Montero was (un grotesque vaniteux et féroce), and the manner of the new loan connected. with railway development, and the colonization of vast tracts of land in one great financial scheme.
And his French friends would remark that evidently this little fellow Decoud connaissait la question @ fond. An important Parisian review asked him for an article on the situation. It was composed in a serious tone and in a spirit of levity. Afterwards he asked one of his intimates
“Have you read my thing about the regeneration of Costaguana—une bonne blague, hein?”
He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his fingers. But far from being that he was in danger of remaining @ sort of nondescript dilettante all his life. He had pushed the habit of universal raillery to a point where it blinded him to the genuine impulses of his own nature. To be suddenly selected for the executive member of the patriotic small-arms committee of Sulaco seemed to him the height of the unexpected, one of those fantastic moves of which only his “dear countrymen” were capable.
“Tt’s like a tile falling on my head. I—I—executive member! It’s the first I hear of it! What do I know of military rifles? C'est funambulesque !” he had ex- claimed to his favourite sister; for the Decoud family— except the old father and mother—used the French language amongst themselves. “And you should see the explanatory and confidential letter! Eight pages of it—no less!”
This letter, in Antonia’s handwriting, was signed by Don José, who appealed to the “young and gifted
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Costaguanero”’ on public grounds, and privately opened his heart to his talented god-son, a man of wealth and leisure, with wide relations, and by his parentage and bringing-up worthy of all confidence.
“Which means,”’ Martin commented, cynically, to his sister, “that I am not likely to misappropriate the funds, or go blabbing to our Chargé d’Affaires here.”
The whole thing was being carried out behind the back of the War Minister, Montero, a mistrusted member of the Ribiera Government, but difficult to get rid of at once. He was not to know anything of it till the troops under Barrios’s command had the new rifle in their hands. The President-Dictator, whose position was very difficult, was alone in the secret.
“How funny!” commented Martin’s sister and con. fidante; to which the brother, with an air of best Pari. sian blague, had retorted:
“It’s immense! The idea of that Chief of the State engaged, with the help of private citizens, in digging a mine under his own indispensable War Minister. No! We are unapproachable!” And he laughed immoder- ately.
Afterwards his sister was surprised at the earnestness and ability he displayed in carrying out his mission, which circumstances made delicate, and his want of special knowledge rendered difficult. She had never seen Martin take so much trouble about anything in his whole life.
“It amuses me,” he had explained, briefly.. “I am beset by a lot of swindlers trying to sell all sorts of gas- pipe weapons. They are charming; they invite me to expensive luncheons; I keep up their hopes; it’s ex- tremely entertaining. Meanwhile, the real affair is being carried through in quite another quarter.”
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- When the business was concluded he declared sud- denly his intention of seeing the precious consignment delivered safely in Sulaco. The whole burlesque busi- ness, he thought, was worth following up to the end. He mumbled his excuses, tugging at his golden beard, before the acute young lady who (after the first wide stare of astonishment) looked at him with narrowed eyes, and pronounced slowly—
“T believe you want to see Antonia.”
“What Antonia?” asked the Costaguana boule- vardier, in a vexed and disdainful tone. He shrugged his shoulders, and spun round on his heel. His sister called out after him joyously—
“The Antonia you used to know when she wore her hair in two plaits down her back.”
He had known her some eight years since, shortly be- fore the Avellanos had left Europe for good, as a tall girl of sixteen, youthfully austere, and of a character already so formed that she ventured to treat slightingly his pose of disabused wisdom. On one occasion, as though she had lost all patience, she flew out at him about the aimlessness of his life and the levity of his opinions. - He was twenty then, an only son, spoiled by his adoring family. This attack disconcerted him so greatly that he had faltered in his affectation of amused superiority before that insignificant chit of a school-girl. But the impression left was so strong that ever since all the girl friends of his sisters recalled to him Antonia Avellanos by some faint resemblance, or by the great force of contrast. It was, he told himself, like a ridiculous fatality. And, of course, in the news the Decouds received regularly from Costaguana, the name of their friends, the Avellanos, cropped up fre- quently—the arrest and the abominable treatment of the ex-Minister, the dangers and hardships endured by
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the family, its withdrawal in poverty to Sulaco, the death of the mother.
The Monterist pronunciamento had taken place be: fore Martin Decoud reached Costaguana. He came out in a roundabout way, through Magellan’s Straits by the main line and the West Coast Service of the O.5.N. Company. His precious consignment arrived just: in time to convert the first feelings of consternation into a mood of hope and resolution. Publicly he was made much of by the familias principales. Privately Don José, still shaken and weak, embraced him with tears in his eyes.
“You have come out yourself! No less could be ex- pected froma Decoud. Alas! our worst fears have been realized,” he moaned, affectionately. And again he hugged his god-son. This was indeed the time for men of intellect and conscience to rally round the endangered cause.
It was then that Martin Decoud, the adopted child of Western Europe, felt the absolute change of atmos- phere. He submitted to being embraced and talked to without a word. He was moved in spite of himself by that note of passion and sorrow unknown on the more refined stage of European politics. But when the tall Antonia, advancing with her light step in the dimness of the big bare Sala of the Avellanos house, offered him her hand (in her emancipated way), and murmured, “I am glad to see you here, Don Martin,” he felt how im- possible it would be to tell these two people that he had intended to go away by the next month’s packet. Don José, meantime, continued his praises. Every acces- sion added to public confidence, and, besides, what an example to the young men at home from the brilliant defender of the country’s regeneration, the worthy ex- pounder of the party’s political faith before the world!
THE ISABELS 157 Everybody had read the magnificent article in the
famous Parisian Review. The world was now in- formed: and the author’s appearance at this moment was like a public act of faith. Young Decoud felt over- come by a feeling of impatient confusion. His plan had been to return by way of the United States through California, visit Yellowstone Park, see Chicago, Niagara, have a look at Canada, perhaps make a short stay in New York, a longer one in Newport, use his letters of introduction. The pressure of Antonia’s hand was so frank, the tone of her voice was so unexpectedly unchanged in its approving warmth, that all he found to say after his low bow was—