refused to be drawn.
"He isn't _my_ son," he remarked.
"I am not speaking of him as my son," snapped Mr. Forrester warmly.
"Speaking of him, not as my son, but as an employee of the company,
what would _you_ do with him?"
"I'd cable him to mind his own business," answered Sam Caldwell.
For the fraction of a second, under levelled eyebrows, Mr. Forrester
stared at young Mr. Caldwell, and then, as a sign that the interview
was at an end, swung in his swivel chair and picked up his letters.
Over his shoulder he said, "Cable him that."
* * * * *
While Roddy in Willemstad was slumbering under his mosquito-net, and
Sam Caldwell in New York was concocting a cablegram, which, he
calculated, would put Roddy in his proper place, but which, instead,
put him in a very bad temper, Captain Codman, at Casa Blanca, had
just finished relating his marvelous tale.
It was the story of how young Forrester, without letters of
introduction, without credentials, had that morning walked into the
consulate and announced that, without asking advice, he intended to
liberate the Lion of Valencia.
Upon the members of the Rojas household the marvelous tale had a
widely different effect.
To understand why this should be so it is necessary to know something
of the three women who formed the Rojas household.
Senora Rojas was an American. When she was very young her father, a
professor at one of the smaller universities in New England, in order
to study the archives of the Spanish rulers of Venezuela, had visited
that country, and taken his daughter with him. She was spirited,
clever, and possessed of the particular type of beauty the Spaniard
admires. Young Rojas saw her, and at once fell in love with her, and,
after the death of her father, which occurred in the North, followed
her there and married her. She then was very young and he an attache
in the diplomatic service. Since their marriage, unlike many of his
countrymen, Rojas had not looked with interest upon any other woman,
and, with each year of their life together, their affection had grown
stronger, their dependence upon each other had increased.
In wisdom, in experience, in honors, Rojas had grown rich. In
countries where his own was only a spot upon the map, Rojas himself,
the statesman, the diplomat, the man who spoke and read in many
languages, the charming host with the brilliant wife, was admired,
sought after. There were three children: the two girls, and a son, a
lieutenant of artillery, whose death during the revolution of Andreda
had brought to the family its first knowledge of grief.
Of the two sisters, Lolita, the elder, was like her father--grave,
gracious, speaking but seldom and, in spite of the years spent in
foreign capitals, still a Spanish-American. Her interests were in her
church, her music and the duties of the household.
Of all the names given at her christening to the younger sister, the
one that survived was Inez. Inez was a cosmopolitan. She had been
permitted to see too much of the world to make it possible for her
ever again to sit down tamely behind the iron bars of the Porto
Cabello drawing-room. She was too much like her American mother; not
as her mother was now, after thirty years in a Venezuelan's household,
but as her mother had been when she left the New England college
town. Unlike her sister, she could not be satisfied with the
cloister-like life of the young girls of Spanish-America. During the
time her father had served as minister to Paris she had been at school
in the convent at Neuilly, but at the time he was transferred to
London she was of an age to make her bow at court, and old enough to
move about with a freedom which, had it been permitted her at home,
would have created public scandal. She had been free to ride in the
Row, to play tennis, to walk abroad, even through public streets and
parks, even when it rained, even unattended. She had met men, not
always as prospective suitors, but as friends and companions.
And there had been a wonderful visit to her mother's country and her
mother's people, when for a summer she had rejoiced in the friendly,
inconsequent, out-of-door life of a Massachusetts' seaside colony.
Once on the North Shore, and later on Cape Cod, she had learned to
swim, to steer a knockabout, to dance the "Boston," even in
rubber-soled shoes, to "sit out" on the Casino balcony and hear young
men, with desperate anxiety, ask if there were any more in South
America like her. To this question she always replied that there were
not; and that, in consequence, if the young man had any thoughts on
the subject, she was the person to whom they should be addressed.
Then, following the calm, uneventful life of the convent, of London
and its gayeties, of the Massachusetts coast with its gray fogs and
open, drift-wood fires, came the return to her own country. There,
with her father, she rode over his plantations among the wild cattle,
or with her mother and sister sat in the _patio_ and read novels in
three languages, or sleepily watched the shadow of the tropical sun
creep across the yellow wall.
And then, suddenly, all of these different, happy lives were turned
into memories, shadows, happenings of a previous and unreal
existence. There came a night, which for months later in terrified
dreams returned to haunt her, a night when she woke to find her
bed surrounded by soldiers, to hear in the court-yard the sobs
of her mother and the shrieks of the serving-women, to see her
father--concerned only for his wife and daughters--in a circle of
the secret police, to see him, before she could speak with him,
hurried to a closed carriage and driven away.
Then had begun the two years of exile in Willemstad, the two years of
mourning, not of quiet grief for one at rest, but anxious, unending
distress for one alive, one dearly loved, one tortured in mind,
enduring petty indignities, bodily torments, degradations that killed
the soul and broke the brave spirit.
To the three women Rojas had been more than husband or father. He had
been their knight, their idol, their reason for happiness. They alone
knew how brave he was, how patient, how, beyond imagination,
considerate. That they should be free to eat and sleep, to work and
play, while he was punished like a felon, buried alive, unable to
carry on the work in the world God had given him to do, caused them
intolerable misery. While he suffered there was no taste in life, and
the three shut themselves from the world. They admitted only the
Consul, who had been his friend, and those who, like themselves, were
exiles, and in whose hatred of Alvarez lay their only hope of again
seeing the one they loved. Time after time a plan of rescue had
failed. A plot that promised release had been disclosed and the
conspirators punished. Hope had left them, and, on the part of their
friends, had been followed by lethargy.
But within the last three months a new hope had arisen, and with it,
for the younger daughter, a new distress.
It was whispered that a revolution, backed by great wealth and
sanctified by the prayers of the people, was to be started near
Valencia. Its leader in the field was to be young Pino Vega, in
several campaigns the personal aide-de-camp of General Rojas, a young
man indebted to his chief for many favors, devoted to him by reason of
mutual confidence and esteem. If successful, this revolt against
Alvarez was to put Vega in command of the army, to free Rojas and to
place him as president at Miraflores. To the women the thought that
Rojas might become president was intolerable. It was because he had
consented to be president that he had suffered. The mere thought of
the office, and of the cruelties that had been practised by the man
who held it, made it, to the women, terrifying.
For Rojas they wanted neither position nor power. They wanted Rojas
free. They wanted to hold him close, to touch him, to look into his
eyes, to see the gentle, understanding smile.
Each felt that there was nothing she could not do, no sacrifice she
would not make, if once more she could sit beside him, holding his
hand, waiting in silence for the joy of hearing him speak. And of the
younger girl the sacrifice has been required. At least a way in which
she could assist the cause that would lead to the freedom of her
father had been presented to her. From Paris, Pino Vega had written
her mother, requesting permission to ask Inez to be his wife.
To the girl, of all the men she knew in Venezuela, Pino was the most
attractive. They both had lived for years outside of their own country
and, in consequence, had much in common. He was thirty-seven, older
than she by fourteen years, but, as has already been pointed out, in
appearance, in manner, in spirits, he seemed much younger than his
years. To his detriment nothing could be said that could not have been
said of the other young men of his class in his country. But the girl
was not in love with the young man of that class, nor with her
country.
Her brother had been sacrificed in what to her had seemed but a
squalid struggle for place between two greedy politicians; her father,
for the very reason that he had served his country loyally,
faithfully, and was, in consequence, beloved by the people, had been
caged like a wild animal. She had no love for her native land. She
distrusted and feared it.
Night after night, as she paced the walk along the cliff where the
waves broke at her feet, she shuddered to think of returning to that
land, only sixty miles from her, that had robbed her of so much that
had made life beautiful; of all, up to the present, that had made it
happy. She wished never to see it again. Could her father have been
returned to her she would have rejoiced that they were exiles. And, as
she distrusted the country, she distrusted the men of the country, at
least those of the class to which Vega belonged. She knew them well,
the born orators, born fighters, born conspirators. To scheme, to
plot, to organize against the authority of the moment was in their
blood.
If she thought of a possible husband, and, in a country where a girl
marries at fifteen, and where her first, if not her only duty in life,
is to marry, it would have been surprising if she had not, the man she
considered as a husband was not a Venezuelan. For their deference to
women, for their courtesy to each other, for their courage as shown in
their campaigns, for their appreciation of art, of letters, of music,
she greatly admired her countrymen; but that they themselves created
nothing, that they scorned labor and all those who labored, made them,
to Inez, intolerable.
That she was half an American of the North was to her a source of
secret pride. With satisfaction she remembered young men she had known
during the summers on the North Shore and Cape Cod, the young men who,
during the first of the week, toiled and sweltered in their offices,
and who, when the week-end came, took their pleasures strenuously, in
exercise and sport. She liked to remember that her American and
English devotees had treated her as a comrade, as an intelligent,
thinking creature. They had not talked to her exclusively of the
beauty of her eyes, her teeth and hair.
She preferred their breathless, "Well played, partner!" to the
elaborate, "I saw the Senorita at mass this morning. As she raised her
eyes to Heaven--the angels grew jealous."
When the mother told Inez that Colonel Vega had written, proposing on
his return to pay his addresses to her, the girl was in genuine
distress. She protested earnestly.
In thirty years Senora Rojas unconsciously had assimilated the
thoughts, the habits, the attitude of mind of the women of her adopted
country, and, when Inez had finished her protest, her mother, seeing
the consequence from her own point of view, was greatly disturbed. "It
is most unfortunate," she said. "Pino is selfish; when he learns you
will not listen to him he will be very angry and he will be less eager
to help your father. He will think only of himself. If you only could
have cared----"
"Pino could not be so cruel," said the girl. But she spoke as though
she were arguing against her own conviction. "He cannot be so vain--so
spoiled," she protested, "that because one woman fails to fall on her
knees to him, he must punish her."
The talk between the mother and daughter had taken place a week before
Colonel Vega's arrival from Paris. On the day his steamer was due,
Senora Rojas again spoke to Inez.
"After mass this morning," she said, "I consulted Father Paul about
Pino. He hopes it will be possible for you not to give him a direct
answer. He says Pino will be leaving us almost at once. He is to land
north of Porto Cabello, and our people are to join him there. Father
Paul thinks," the Senora hesitated, and then went on hastily, "you
might let him go in ignorance. You might ask for time to consider. You
might even tell him----"
The girl's cheeks flushed crimson and the tears came to her eyes. The
mother looked away. After an instant's silence she exclaimed bitterly:
"It is only a lie to a man who has lied to many women! I think of
nothing," she declared, "but that it would keep him true to your
father. What else matters!" she broke forth, "I would lie, cheat,
steal," she cried, "if I could save your father one moment's
suffering."
The girl took the hand of the elder woman and pressed it to her cheek.
"I know," she whispered, "I know."
There was a moment's silence. "If it were anything else!" protested
the girl. "If I could change places with father I would run to do
it--you know that--but this"--with a gesture of repugnance the girl
threw out her hands--"to pretend--to care! It is degrading, it makes
me feel unclean."
"You will make an enemy," asked the mother coldly, "of the only person
who can bring your father back to us? Sooner than let Pino think you
care for him, you would let him turn against us? You and Pino," she
pleaded, "are old friends. Your father is his friend. What more
natural!" She broke forth hysterically. "I beg of you," she cried, "I
command you not to make an enemy of Pino. Tell him to wait, tell him
that now you can think of nothing but your father, but that when your
father is free, that if he will only set him free--" The mother held
the girl toward her, searching her eyes. "Promise me," she begged.
Inez regarded her mother unhappily, and turned away.
This, then, on the afternoon of Colonel Vega's arrival at Curacao was
the position toward him and toward each other of the three women of
the Rojas household, and explains, perhaps, why, when that same
afternoon Captain Codman told them the marvelous tale of Roddy's
proposition, Senora Rojas and her daughter received the news each in a
different manner.
Before she had fully understood, Senora Rojas exclaimed with
gratitude:
"It is the hand of God. It is His hand working through this great
company."
"Not at all," snapped Captain Codman. "The company has nothing to
do with it. As far as I can see it is only the wild plan of a
harum-scarum young man. He has no authority. He's doing it for
excitement, for an adventure. He doesn't seem to know anything of--of
what is going on--and, personally, I think he's mad. He and his friend
are the two men who twice drove past your house this morning. What his
friend is like I don't know; but Forrester seems quite capable of
forcing his way in here. He wants what he calls 'credentials.' In
fact, when I refused to help him, he as much as threatened to come
here and get them for himself."
The voice of Senora Rojas was shaken with alarm. "He is coming here!"
she cried. "But if he is seen _here_ they will know at once at
Caracas, and my husband will suffer. It may mean the end of
everything." Her voice rose, trembling with indignation. "How dare he!
How dare he, for the sake of an adventure, risk the life of my
husband? How can he expect to succeed where our friends have failed,
and now, when Pino has returned and there is hope."
"I told him that," said the Consul.
"You warned him," insisted the Senora; "you told him he must not come
near us?"
Inez, who, with her sister, stood eagerly intent behind the chair in
which their mother was seated, laid her hand soothingly upon the
Senora's shoulder.
"Is it best," she asked, "to turn the young man away without learning
what he wishes to do? Living in Porto Cabello, he may know something
we could not know. Did you find out," she asked the Consul, "in what
way Mr. Forrester wishes to help us?"
"No," confessed Captain Codman, "I did not. I was so taken aback," he
explained; "he was so ignorant, so cocksure, that he made me mad. And
I just ordered him out, and I told him, told him for his own good, of
course," the Consul added hastily, "that he talked too much."
With critical eyes Inez regarded her old friend doubtfully, and shook
her head at him.
"And how did he take that?" she asked.
"He told me," answered the Consul, painfully truthful, "that my parrot
had said the same thing, and that we might both be wrong."
There was an instant's silence, and then Inez laughed. In shocked
tones her mother exclaimed reprovingly.
"But he comes here," protested the girl, "to do us a service, the
greatest service, and he is ordered away. Why should we refuse to let
him help us, to let any one help us. We should make the most of every
chance that offers."
Senora Rojas turned in her chair and looked steadily at her daughter.
"Your advice is good, Inez," she said, "but it comes strangely from
you."
At the same moment, as though conjured by her thought, a servant
announced Colonel Vega, and that gentleman, with several of those who
had lunched with him at the Cafe Ducrot, entered the room. In alarm
Captain Codman waited only to shake hands with the visitors and then
precipitately departed. But in the meeting of the exiles there was
nothing that would have compromised him. The reception of Colonel Vega
by the three women was without outward significance. They greeted
him, not as a leader of their conspiracy, but as they might have
received any friend who, after an absence, had returned to them. When
he bent over the hand of Inez he raised his liquid eyes to hers, but
the girl welcomed him simply, without confusion.
He decided that her mother could not as yet have told her of his
wishes. Had she done so he felt sure, in view of the honor he would
pay her, her embarrassment at meeting him would have been apparent to
all.
Vega himself elected to tell the ladies of the attack made upon him at
the Cafe Ducrot. He made little of it. He let the ladies understand
that his life, like that of all public men, was always at the mercy of
assassins. To Roddy he gave full credit.
"Imagine this man reaching for his weapon," he related dramatically,
"myself too far from him to fall upon him, and my arms resting upon
the shoulders of my two good friends. Their safety, also, is in my
mind. But I am helpless. I saw the villain smile confidently. He
points the weapon. Then the young man springs upon him and the bullets
pass us harmlessly. Believe me, but for Mr. Forrester all three of us,
General Pulido, Colonel Ramon and myself, might now be dead."
The two gentlemen designated dismissed the thought with a negligent
wave of the hand. It suggested that, to soldiers like themselves,
being dead was an annoyance to which they had grown accustomed.
"Mr. Forrester!" exclaimed Inez, catching at the name.
"Mr. Forrester!" repeated her mother. "But I thought--I was told only
just now that he knew nothing of our plans."
"That is quite true," Colonel Vega assured her. "He was not with us.
He was there by accident."
"Let us rather say," corrected Senora Rojas piously, "he was placed
there by a special Providence to save you."
That the Almighty should be especially concerned in his well-being did
not appear to Vega as at all unlikely.
He nodded his head gravely.
"It may be so," he admitted.
Through force of habit Senora Rojas glanced about her; but the open
windows showed the empty garden, and around her, seated in two rows of
rocking-chairs, the ladies facing the door, the men facing the ladies,
she saw only friends.
"But why," she asked, "is young Mr. Forrester _not_ in the confidence
of his father? Can he not trust his own son?"
As though sure of her answer she cast a triumphant glance at the
daughter who had dared, against Captain Codman and herself, to
champion Mr. Forrester's son. Pino frowned mysteriously. He did not
like to say that with any action of the great Mr. Forrester he was not
acquainted. So he scowled darkly and shook his head.
"It is a puzzle," he said; "the young man is a fine fellow. To him I
owe my life." He appealed to his friends, who, in time to the sedate
rocking of the chairs, nodded gravely. "But his father is very
decided. He cables us to send him at once to Porto Cabello. He
instructs us not to let him know what we plan to do. I learned that in
Porto Cabello he is only a workman, or, a little better, the foreman
of the Jamaica coolies. I do not say so," Pino pointed out, as though
if he wished he might say a great deal, "but it looks as though he
were here for some punishment--as though he had displeased his father.
Or," he demanded, "why should his father, who is so wealthy, give his
son the wages of a foreman?"
During the visit of the conspirators the traditions of Spanish
etiquette gave Colonel Vega no opportunity to separate Inez from the
others; and soon, without having spoken to her alone, he and his
followers departed.
When they had gone, Inez, as was her custom when she wished to be by
herself, ordered her pony and rode out on the cliff road toward the
orange groves. Riding unattended was a breach of Spanish-American
convention. But her mother permitted it, and, in the eyes of the
people of Willemstad, her long residence abroad, and the fact that she
was half American of the North, partially excused it. Every morning at
sunrise, before the heat of the day, and just before the sun set, Inez
made these excursions. They were the bright moments of her present
life. If she did not wish to think, they prevented her from thinking;
if she did wish to think, they protected her from intrusion, and gave
her strength and health to bear the grinding anxiety of the other
hours. They brought back to her, also, memories of rides of former
days, before her father had been taken from her, when they had trotted
politely over the tan bark of Rotten Row, or when, with her soldier
brother, she had chased the wild cattle on the plantation.
Now, with her head bent, with the hand that held the reins lying
loosely on her knee, she rode at a walk, her body relaxed, her eyes
seeing nothing. Her mind was intent upon her problem, one in which
her answer to Pino Vega was but a part. To carry out the plan she had
in mind she needed a man to help her, and there were two men to whom
she might appeal. But only one, not both of them, could help her. She
was determined not to return from her ride until she had decided which
one it should be.
After an hour, as though she had reached her decision and was fearful
lest she might reconsider it, she lifted the pony into a gallop and
raced to Casa Blanca. On arriving there she went directly to her room,
wrote a note, and returned with it to the stable where the groom was
just removing the saddle from her pony.
He was an old man, trusted by Inez. As a body servant he had first
served her brother, then her father, and after the imprisonment of
General Rojas, had volunteered to follow the women of the family into
exile. For a moment the girl regarded him earnestly.
"Pedro," she asked, "what would you do to save the master?"
When the man was assured he had understood her he lowered the saddle
to the ground, and standing erect threw out his arms with his open
palms toward her. In pantomime he seemed to signify that for the
purpose she named, his body, his life was at her disposition.
Inez showed him the note.
"You will take this," she said, "to an American, Mr. Forrester. He is
at one of the hotels. No one must know you are seeking him, no one
must see you give him this note. Not even my mother must suspect that
any message has been sent from this house to that gentleman. When he
has read the note he will say 'yes' or 'no.' If he asks questions you
will shake your head. As soon as you get your answer come directly to
me."