Section 40

“Shut these windows!’ Charles Gould yelled at him, angrily. All the other servants, terrified at what they took for the signal of a general massacre, had rushed up- stairs, tumbling over each other, men and women, the obscure and generally invisible population of the ground floor on the four sides of the patio. The women, scream- ing “Misericordia!” ran right into the room, and, fall- ing on their knees against the walls, began to cross them- selves convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked the doorway in an instant—mozos from the stable, gardeners, nondescript helpers living on the crumbs of the munificent house—and Charles Gould beheld all the extent of his domestic establishment, even to the gatekeeper. This was a half-paralyzed old man, whose long white locks fell down to his shoulders: an heirloom taken up by Charles Gould’s familial piety. He could remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a Costa- guanero of the second generation, chief of the Sulaco province; he had been his personal mozo years and years ago in peace and war; had been allowed to attend his master in prison; had, on the fatal morning, fol- lowed the firing squad; and, peeping from behind one of the cypresses growing along the wall of the Franciscan Convent, had seen, with his eyes starting out of his head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall with his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly the big patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the other servants. But he was surprised to see a shrivelled old hag or two, of whose existence within the walls of his house he had not been aware. They must have been the
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mothers, or even the grandmothers of some of his people. There were a few children, too, more or less naked, cry- ing and clinging to the legs of their elders. He had never before noticed any sign of a child in his patio. Even Leonarda, the camerista, came in a fright, pushing through, with her spoiled, pouting face of a favourite maid, leading the Viola girls by the hand. The crockery rattled on table and sideboard, and the whole house seemed to sway in the deafening wave of sound.
CHAPTER FIVE
Durine the night the expectant populace had taken possession of all the belfries in the town in order to wel- come Pedrito Montero, who was making his entry after having slept the night in Rincon. And first came strag- gling 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 Sefior 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 Sefiores Fuentes and Gamacho at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the feat of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota ina 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 prov- ince; 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 cam-
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paigning, 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 char- acterized the expression of all these sun-blacked coun- tenances; they glared down haughtily with their scorched eyes at the crowd, or, blinking upwards in- solently, 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 eques- trian statue of the King dazzlingly white in the sun- shine, 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 vic- torious 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, to- gether with bodily strength, were looked upon, even more than courage, as heroic virtues by primitive man- kind. 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;
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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 Mon- tero 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 Tomé 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 blocd. 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
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him to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger, in- corrigibly 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 deter- mined 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 devour- ing 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. No- body 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 indo- lence 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 unpre-
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ventable. ‘The general himself probably could have beet 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 be- come 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, fellowing 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 rail- ways, 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 moun- tains with some two hundred Ilaneros, 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 be- trayed him into a rashness of which he was becoming aware. As he rode at the head of his llaneros. he re- gretted that there were so few of them. The enthusiasm of the populace reassured him. They yelled “Viva Montero! Viva Pedrito!’” Inorder to make them still
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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 con- fidence slipped his hands under the arms of Sefiores 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 In- tendencia. 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, dis- mounted into a shouting and perspiring throng of en- thusiasts 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 de- light 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 hilar- ity. On his right, Sefior 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. After- wards the greater part of the citizens remained fasci- nated 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
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eyes, the sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, @ hand laid familiarly on Gamacho’s shoulder; a hand waved formally towards the little black-coated person of Sefior Fuentes, advocate and politician and a true friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the orator bursting out suddenly propagated themselves ir- regularly to the confines of the crowd, like flames run~ ning 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 dis- appeared from the public gaze and the enormous Ga- macho, left alone, advanced, raising his hat high above his head. Then he covered himself proudly and yelled out, “Ciudadanos!” A dull roar greeted Sefior Ga- macho, 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, snarl- ing incessantly—
“What stupidity! What destruction!”
Sefior Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn |
disposition to murmur—
“Tt 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
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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 Géfé 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 am- bushes, charged by his brother at his own demand with the organization of Sulaco on democractic prin- ciples. The night before, during the consultation with his partisans, who had come out to meet him in Rincon, he had opened his intentions to Seftor Fuentes—
“We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, con- fiding the destinies of our beloved country to the wisdom and valiance of my heroic brother, the invincible gen- eral. A plebiscite. Do you understand?”
And Sefior Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks, had inclined his head slightly to the left, letting a thin,
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Ln
a bluish jet of smoke escape through his pursed lips. He q
had understood.
His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation Not a single chair, table, sofa, étagére 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 Ga- macho by-and-by. And Sefior Gamacho’s oration, de- lectable 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 rob- bing poor people of their lands, and with the help of these Goths and paralytics, the aristocrats would con- vert them into toiling and miserable slaves. And the leperos, flinging about the corners of their dirty white mantas, yelled their approbation. General