E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
THE DICTATOR
by
JUSTIN McCARTHY, M.P.
Author of 'Dear Lady Disdain' 'Donna Quixote' Etc.
A New Edition
London
Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly
1895
Printed by
Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square
London
CONTENTS
I. AN EXILE IN LONDON
II. A GENTLEMAN-ADVENTURER
III. AT THE GARDEN GATE
IV. THE LANGLEYS
V. 'MY GREAT DEED WAS TOO GREAT'
VI. 'HERE IS MY THRONE--BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'
VII. THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO
VIII. 'I WONDER WHY?'
IX. THE PRIVATE SECRETARY
X. A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
XI. HELENA
XII. DOLORES
XIII. DOLORES ON THE LOOK-OUT
XIV. A SICILIAN KNIFE
XV. 'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'
XVI. THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE
XVII. MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION
XVIII. HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER
XIX. TYPICAL AMERICANS--NO DOUBT
XX. THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD
XXI. MORGIANA
XXII. THE EXPEDITION
XXIII. THE PANGS OF THE SUPPRESSED MESSAGE
XXIV. THE EXPLOSION
XXV. SOME VICTIMS
XXVI. 'WHEN ROGUES----'
XXVII. 'SINCE IT IS SO!'
THE DICTATOR
CHAPTER I
AN EXILE IN LONDON
The May sunlight streamed in through the window, making curious patterns
of the curtains upon the carpet. Outside, the tide of life was flowing
fast; the green leaves of the Park were already offering agreeable shade
to early strollers; the noise of cabs and omnibuses had set in steadily
for the day. Outside, Knightsbridge was awake and active; inside, sleep
reigned with quiet. The room was one of the best bedrooms in Paulo's
Hotel; it was really tastefully furnished, soberly decorated, in the
style of the fifteenth French Louis. A very good copy of Watteau was
over the mantel-piece, the only picture in the room. There had been a
fire in the hearth overnight, for a grey ash lay there. Outside on the
ample balcony stood a laurel in a big blue pot, an emblematic tribute on
Paulo's part to honourable defeat which might yet turn to victory.
There were books about the room: a volume of Napoleon's maxims, a French
novel, a little volume of Sophocles in its original Greek. A
uniform-case and a sword-case stood in a corner. A map of South America
lay partially unrolled upon a chair. The dainty gilt clock over the
mantel-piece, a genuine heritage from the age of Louis Quinze, struck
eight briskly. The Dictator stirred in his sleep.
Presently there was a tapping at the door to the left of the bed, a door
communicating with the Dictator's private sitting-room. Still the
Dictator slept, undisturbed by the slight sound. The sound was not
repeated, but the door was softly opened, and a young man put his head
into the room and looked at the slumbering Dictator. The young man was
dark, smooth-shaven, with a look of quiet alertness in his face. He
seemed to be about thirty years of age. His dark eyes watched the
sleeping figure affectionately for a few seconds. 'It seems a pity to
wake him,' he muttered; and he was about to draw his head back and close
the door, when the Dictator stirred again, and suddenly waking swung
himself round in the bed and faced his visitor. The visitor smiled
pleasantly. 'Buenos dias, Escelencia,' he said.
The Dictator propped himself up on his left arm and looked at him.
'Good morning, Hamilton,' he answered. 'What's the good of talking
Spanish here? Better fall back upon simple Saxon until we can see the
sun rise again in Gloria. And as for the Excellency, don't you think we
had better drop that too?'
'Until we see the sun rise in Gloria,' said Hamilton. He had pushed the
door open now, and entered the room, leaning carelessly against the
door-post. 'Yes; that may not be so far off, please Heaven; and, in the
meantime, I think we had better stick to the title and all forms,
Excellency.'
The Dictator laughed again. 'Very well, as you please. The world is
governed by form and title, and I suppose such dignities lend a decency
even to exile in men's eyes. Is it late? I was tired, and slept like a
dog.'
'Oh no; it's not late,' Hamilton answered. 'Only just struck eight. You
wished to be called, or I shouldn't have disturbed you.'
'Yes, yes; one must get into no bad habits in London. All right; I'll
get up now, and be with you in twenty minutes.'
'Very well, Excellency.' Hamilton bowed as he spoke in his most official
manner, and withdrew. The Dictator looked after him, laughing softly to
himself.
'L'excellence malgré lui,' he thought. 'An excellency in spite of
myself. Well, I dare say Hamilton is right; it may serve to fill my
sails when I have any sails to fill. In the meantime let us get up and
salute London. Thank goodness it isn't raining, at all events.'
He did his dressing unaided. 'The best master is his own man' was an
axiom with him. In the most splendid days of Gloria he had always
valeted himself; and in Gloria, where assassination was always a
possibility, it was certainly safer. His body-servant filled his bath
and brought him his brushed clothes; for the rest he waited upon
himself.
He did not take long in dressing. All his movements were quick, clean,
and decisive; the movements of a man to whom moments are precious, of a
man who has learnt by long experience how to do everything as shortly
and as well as possible. As soon as he was finished he stood for an
instant before the long looking-glass and surveyed himself. A man of
rather more than medium height, strongly built, of soldierly carriage,
wearing his dark frock-coat like a uniform. His left hand seemed to miss
its familiar sword-hilt. The face was bronzed by Southern suns; the
brown eyes were large, and bright, and keen; the hair was a fair brown,
faintly touched here and there with grey. His full moustache and beard
were trimmed to a point, almost in the Elizabethan fashion. Any serious
student of humanity would at once have been attracted by the face.
Habitually it wore an expression of gentle gravity, and it could smile
very sweetly, but it was the face of a strong man, nevertheless, of a
stubborn man, of a man ambitious, a man with clear resolve, personal or
otherwise, and prompt to back his resolve with all he had in life, and
with life itself.
He put into his buttonhole the green-and-yellow button which represented
the order of the Sword and Myrtle, the great Order of La Gloria, which
in Gloria was invested with all the splendour of the Golden Fleece; the
order which could only be worn by those who had actually ruled in the
republic. That, according to satirists, did not greatly limit the number
of persons who had the right to wear it. Then he formally saluted
himself in the looking-glass. 'Excellency,' he said again, and laughed
again. Then he opened his double windows and stepped out upon the
balcony.
London was looking at its best just then, and his spirits stirred in
grateful response to the sunlight. How dismal everything would have
seemed, he was thinking, if the streets had been soaking under a leaden
sky, if the trees had been dripping dismally, if his glance directed to
the street below had rested only upon distended umbrellas glistening
like the backs of gigantic crabs! Now everything was bright, and London
looked as it can look sometimes, positively beautiful. Paulo's Hotel
stands, as everybody knows, in the pleasantest part of Knightsbridge,
facing Kensington Gardens. The sky was brilliantly blue, the trees were
deliciously green; Knightsbridge below him lay steeped in a pure gold of
sunlight. The animation of the scene cheered him sensibly. May is seldom
summery in England, but this might have been a royal day of June.
Opposite to him he could see the green-grey roofs of Kensington Palace.
At his left he could see a public-house which bore the name and stood
upon the site of the hostelry where the Pretender's friends gathered on
the morning when they expected to see Queen Anne succeeded by the heir
to the House of Stuart. Looking from the one place to the other, he
reflected upon the events of that morning when those gentlemen waited in
vain for the expected tidings, when Bolingbroke, seated in the council
chamber at yonder palace, was so harshly interrupted. It pleased the
stranger for a moment to trace a resemblance between the fallen fortunes
of the Stuart Prince and his own fallen fortunes, as dethroned Dictator
of the South American Republic of Gloria. 'London is my St. Germain's,'
he said to himself with a laugh, and he drummed the national hymn of
Gloria upon the balcony-rail with his fingers.
His gaze, wandering over the green bravery of the Park, lost itself in
the blue sky. He had forgotten London; his thoughts were with another
place under a sky of stronger blue, in the White House of a white square
in a white town. He seemed to hear the rattle of rifle shots, shrill
trumpet calls, angry party cries, the clatter of desperate charges
across the open space, the angry despair of repulses, the piteous
pageant of civil war. Knightsbridge knew nothing of all that. Danes may
have fought there, the chivalry of the White Rose or the Red Rose ridden
there, gallant Cavaliers have spurred along it to fight for their king.
All that was past; no troops moved there now in hostility to brethren of
their blood. But to that one Englishman standing there, moody in spite
of the sunlight, the scene which his eyes saw was not the tranquil
London street, but the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, red with blood, and
'cut up,' in the painter's sense, with corpses.
'Shall I ever get back? Shall I ever get back?' that was the burden to
which his thoughts were dancing. His spirit began to rage within him to
think that he was here, in London, helpless, almost alone, when he ought
to be out there, sword in hand, dictating terms to rebels repentant or
impotent. He gave a groan at the contrast, and then he laughed a little
bitterly and called himself a fool. 'Things might be worse,' he said.
'They might have shot me. Better for them if they had, and worse for
Gloria. Yes, I am sure of it--worse for Gloria!'
His mind was back in London now, back in the leafy Park, back in
Knightsbridge. He looked down into the street, and noted that a man was
loitering on the opposite side. The man in the street saw that the
Dictator noted him. He looked up at the Dictator, looked up above the
Dictator, and, raising his hat, pointed as if towards the sky. The
Dictator, following the direction of the gesture, turned slightly and
looked upwards, and received a sudden thrill of pleasure, for just above
him, high in the air, he could see the flutter of a mass of green and
yellow, the colours of the national flag of Gloria. Mr. Paulo, mindful
of what was due even to exiled sovereignty, had flown the Gloria flag in
honour of the illustrious guest beneath his roof. When that guest looked
down again the man in the street had disappeared.
'That is a good omen. I accept it,' said the Dictator. 'I wonder who my
friend was?' He turned to go back into his room, and in doing so noticed
the laurel.
'Another good omen,' he said. 'My fortunes feel more summerlike already.
The old flag still flying over me, an unknown friend to cheer me, and a
laurel to prophesy victory--what more could an exile wish? His
breakfast, I think,' and on this reflection he went back into his
bedroom, and, opening the door through which Hamilton had talked to him,
entered the sitting-room.