"I must lay hold upon this rumour," he said, "and strangle it. I have
thought of a way. I will give a party here on the evening of the day
the _Ariadne_ calls at Las Cuevas. I will spend a great deal of money
on that party. It will be plain that I have no thought of sailing on
the _Ariadne_. I hope it will be plain that I have no thought of
sailing at all. For I think everyone in Santa Paula," he added with a
grim laugh, "knows me well enough to feel sure that I should not spend
a great deal of money on a party if I meant to run away from the place
afterwards."
Considering Santa Paula impartially, I found the reasoning to be
sound. Juan Ballester was not a generous man. He took, but he did not
give.
"This is what I propose," he said, and he handed me a paper on which
he had jotted down his arrangements. He had his heart set on his
Republic, that I knew. But I knew too that it must have been a fearful
wrench for him to decide upon the lavish expenditure of this
entertainment. There was to be dancing in the ballroom, a conjuror
where the Cabinet met--that seemed to be a happy touch--supper in a
marquee, fairy lights and fireworks in the garden, and buffets
everywhere.
"You yourself will see after the invitations," he said, with a grin.
"Certainly, your Excellency," I answered. They would come within the
definition of opportunities.
"But here," he continued, "is a list of those who must be asked"; and
it was not until I had the list in my hand that I began to see that
here I might find an answer to my question. I looked quickly down the
names.
"Yes, she's there," said Juan Ballester; and there she was, as plain
as a pikestaff--Olivia Calavera. I was not surprised. Ballester never
troubled about such trifles as consistency. He wanted her, so he
invited her. Nevertheless, I could have danced a _pas seul_. For
though Olivia could hardly slip out of her own house in any guise
without detection since she had no visitors, she would have a good
chance of escaping from the throng of guests at the President's party.
I left Juan Ballester with a greatly lightened heart. I looked at my
watch. It was not yet eleven. Full of my idea, nothing would serve me
but I must this moment set it in motion. I went downstairs into the
Square. Though the night was hot, I had slipped on an overcoat to
conceal the noticeable breastplate of a white shirt, and I walked
quickly for half a mile until I came opposite to a high and neglected
building, a place of darkness and rough shutters. This was the Opera
House. Beside the Opera House was a little dwelling. I rang the bell,
and the door was opened by a tall, lean gentleman in a frock-coat. For
the third time that night good luck had stood my friend.
"Mr. Henry P. Crowninshield," I said, "the world-famous _impresario_,
I believe?"
"And you, Mr. Carlyon, are the President's private secretary?" he said
coldly.
"Not to-night," said I.
With a grunt Mr. Crowninshield led the way into his parlour and stood
with his finger-tips resting on the table and his long body bent over
it. Mr. Crowninshield came from New York City, and I did not beat
about the bush with him. I told him exactly the story of Olivia and
Juan Ballester.
"She is in great trouble," I concluded. "There is something which I do
not understand. But it comes to this. She must escape. The railways
are watched, so is her house. There is only one way of escape--and
that is on the seventeenth, the night when the _Ariadne_ calls at Las
Cuevas and the President gives his party."
Mr. Crowninshield nodded, and his long body slid with a sort of fluid
motion into a chair.
"Go on, sir," he said; "I am interested."
"And I encouraged," said I. "Let us follow the Senorita's proceedings
on the night of the seventeenth. She goes dressed in her best to the
President's party. She is on view to the last possible moment. She
then slips quietly out into the garden. In the garden wall there is a
private door, of which I have a key. I let her out by that door.
Outside that door there is a closed, inconspicuous carriage waiting
for her. She slips into that carriage--and that is where you come in."
"How?" asked Mr. Crowninshield.
"Inside the carriage she finds a disguise--dress, wig, everything
complete--a disguise easy to slip on over her ball-gown and sufficient
to baffle a detective half a yard away."
"You shall have it, sir! My heart bleeds for that young lady!" cried
Mr. Crowninshield, and he grasped my hand in the noblest fashion. He
had been a baritone in his day. "Besides," and he descended swiftly to
the mere level of a human being, "I have a score against Master Juan,
and I should like to get a little of my own back."
That was precisely the point of view upon which I had counted.
Throughout his first term of office Juan Ballester had hired a box at
the Opera. Needless to say, he had never paid for it, and Mr.
Crowninshield unwisely pressed for payment. When requests failed, Mr.
Crowninshield went to threats. He threatened the Law, the American
Eagle, and the whole of the United States Navy. Ballester's reply had
been short, sharp, and decisive. The State telephone system was being
overhauled. Juan Ballester moved the Exchange to a building on the
other side of the Opera House, and then summarily closed the Opera
House on the ground that the music prevented the operators from
hearing the calls. It was not astonishing that Mr. Crowninshield was
eager to help Olivia Calavera. He lit a candle and led me through his
private door across the empty theatre, ghostly with its sheeted
benches, to the wardrobe-room. We chose a nun's dress, long enough to
hide Olivia's gown, and a coif which would conceal her hair and
overshadow her face.
"In that her own father wouldn't know her. It will be dark; the Quay
is ill-lighted, she has only to shuffle like an old woman; she will go
third-class, of course, in the train. Who is to see her off?"
"No one," I answered. "I dread that half-hour in the train for her
without a friend at her side. The Quay will be watched, too. She must
run the gauntlet alone. Luckily there will be a crowd of harvesters
returning to Spain. Luckily, also, she has courage. But it will be the
worst of her trials. My absence would be noticed. I can't go."
"No, but I can!" cried Mr. Crowninshield. "An old padre seeing off an
old nun to her new mission--eh? Juan will be gritting his teeth in the
morning because I am an American citizen."
Mr. Crowninshield was aflame with his project. He took a stick and
tottered about the room in the most comical fashion. "I will bring the
carriage myself to the garden door," said he. "I will be inside of it.
My property man--he comes from Poughkeepsie--shall be the driver. I
will dress the young lady as we drive slowly to the station, and
Sister Pepita and the Padre Antonio will direct their feeble steps to
the darkest corner of the worst-lit carriage in the train."
I thanked him with all my heart. It had seemed to me terrible that
Olivia should have to make her way alone on board the steamer. Now she
would have someone to enhearten and befriend her. I met Olivia once at
the house of Enrique Gimeno, and made her acquainted with the scheme,
and on the night of the sixteenth the steamship agent rang me up on
the telephone.
"The _Ariadne_ will arrive at nine to-morrow night. The passengers
will leave Santa Paula at half-past ten. Good luck!"
I went to the window and looked out over the garden. The marquee was
erected, the fairy lights strung upon the trees, a set piece with the
portrait of Juan Ballester and a Latin motto--_semper fidelis_--raised
its monstrous joinery against the moon. Twenty-four hours more and, if
all went well, Olivia would be out upon the high seas, on her way to
Trinidad. Surely all must go well. I went over in my mind every detail
of our preparations. I recognised only one chance of failure--the
chance that Mr. Crowninshield in his exuberance might over-act his
part. But I was wrong. It was, after all, Olivia who brought our fine
scheme to grief.
V
There is no doubt about it. Women are not reasonable beings. Otherwise
Olivia would never have come to the President's party in a white lace
coat over a clinging gown of white satin. She looked beautiful, but I
was dismayed when I saw her. She had come with the Gimenos, and I took
her aside, and I am afraid that I scolded her.
"But you told me," she expostulated, "I was to spare no pains. There
must be nothing of the traveller about me"; and there was not. From
the heels of her satin slippers to the topmost tress of her hair she
was dressed as she alone could dress in Santa Paula.
"But of course I meant you to wear black," I whispered.
"Oh, I didn't think of it," Olivia exclaimed wearily. "Please don't
lecture"; and she dropped into a chair with such a lassitude upon her
face that I thought she was going to faint.
"It doesn't matter," I said hastily. "No doubt the disguise will cover
it. At ten o'clock, slip down into the garden. Until then, dance!"
"Dance!" she exclaimed, looking piteously up into my face.
"Yes," I insisted impatiently, and taking her hand, I raised her from
her chair.
She had no lack of partners, for the President himself singled her out
and danced in a quadrille with her. Others timorously followed his
example. But though she did dance, I was grievously disappointed--for
a time. It seemed that her soul was flickering out in her. Just when
she most needed her courage and her splendid spirit, she failed of
them.
There were only two more hours after a long fortnight of endurance.
Yet those two last hours, it seemed, she could not face. I know now
that I never acted with greater cruelty than on that night when I kept
her dancing. But even while she danced, there came to me some fear
that I had misjudged her. I watched her from a corner of the ballroom.
There was a great change in her. Her face seemed to me smaller, her
eyes bigger, darker even, and luminous with some haunting look. But
there was more. I could not define the change--at first. Then the word
came to me. There was a spirituality in her aspect which was new to
her, an unearthliness. Surely, I thought, the fruit of great
suffering; and blundering, with the truth under my very nose, I began
to ask myself a foolish question. Had Harry Vandeleur played her
false?
A movement of the company awakened me. A premonitory sputter of
rockets drew the guests to the cloak-room, from the cloak-room to the
garden. I saw Olivia fetch her lace coat and slip it over her
shoulders like the rest. It was close upon ten. The Fates were
favouring us, or perhaps I was favouring the Fates. For I had arranged
that the fireworks should begin just a few minutes before the hour
struck. In the darkness of the garden Olivia could slip away, and her
absence would not afterwards be noticed.
I waited at the garden door. I heard the clock strike. I saw Juan
Ballester's profile in fire against a dark blue sky of velvet and
stars. I shook hands with myself in that the moon would not rise till
one. And then a whiteness gleamed between the bushes, and Olivia was
at my side. Her hand sought mine and clung to it. I opened the postern
and looked out into a little street. The lamps of a closed carriage
shone twenty yards away, and but for the carriage the street was
empty.
"Now!" I whispered.
We ran out. I opened the carriage door. I caught a glimpse of horn
spectacles, a lantern-jawed, unshaven face, a shovel hat; and I heard
a stifled oath. Mr. Crowninshield, too, had noticed Olivia's white
gown. She jumped in, I shut the door, and the carriage rolled away. I
went back into the garden, where Juan Ballester's profile was growing
ragged.
Of the next hour or two I have only confused memories. I counted
stages in Olivia's progress as I passed from room to room among the
guests. Now she would have reached the station; now the train had
stopped on the Quay at Las Cuevas; now, perhaps, the gangway had been
withdrawn and the great ship was warping out into the river. At one
o'clock I smoked a cigarette in the garden. From the marquee came the
clatter of supper. In the sky the moon was rising. And somewhere
outside the three-mile limit a rippling path of silver struck across
the _Ariadne's_ dark bows. I was conscious of a swift exultation. I
heard the throb of the screw and saw the water flashing from the
ship's sides.
Then I remembered that I had left the garden door unlocked. I went to
it and by chance looked out into the street. I received a shock. For,
twenty yards away, the lights of a closed carriage shone quietly
beside the kerb. I wondered whether the last few hours had been really
the dream of a second. I even looked back into the garden, to make
sure that the profile of Juan Ballester was not still sputtering in
fire. Then a detail or two brought me relief. The carriage was clearly
a private carriage; the driver on the box wore livery--at all events,
I saw a flash of bright buttons on his coat. In my relief I walked
from the garden towards the carriage. The driver recognised me most
likely--recognised, at all events, that I came from the private door
of the President's garden. For he made some kind of salute.
I supposed that he had been told to wait at this spot, away from the
park of carriages, and I should have turned back but for a
circumstance which struck me as singular. It was a very hot night, and
yet not only were the windows of the carriage shut, but the blinds
were drawn close besides. I could not see into the carriage, but there
was light at the edges of the blinds. A lamp was burning inside. I
stood on the pavement, and a chill struck into my blood and made me
shiver. I listened. There was no sound of any movement within the
carriage. It must be empty. I assured myself and again doubted. The
little empty street, the closed carriage with the light upon the edges
of the blinds, the absolute quiet, daunted me. I stepped forward and
gently opened the door. I saw Olivia. There was no trace of the nun's
gown, nor the coif. But that her hair was ruffled she might this
moment have left Juan Ballester's drawing-room.
She turned her face to me, shook her head, and smiled.
"It was of no use, my friend," she said gently. "They were on the
watch at Las Cuevas. An officer brought me back. He has gone in to ask
Juan what he shall do with me."
Olivia had given up the struggle--that was clear.
"It was Crowninshield's fault!" I cried.
"No, it was mine," she answered.
And here is what had happened, as I learnt it afterwards. All had gone
well until the train reached Las Cuevas. There the police were on the
look-out for her. The Padre Antonio, however, excited no suspicion,
and very likely Sister Pepita would have passed unnoticed too. But as
she stepped down from the carriage on to the step, and from the step
to the ground, an officer was startled by the unexpected appearance of
a small foot in a white silk stocking and a white satin slipper. Now,
the officer had seen nuns before, old and young, but never had he seen
one in white satin shoes, to say nothing of the silk stockings. He
became more than curious. He pointed her out to his companions. Sister
Pepita was deftly separated in the crowd from the Padre Antonio--cut
out, to borrow the old nautical phrase--and arrested. She was
conducted towards a room in the station, but the steamer's siren
hooted its warning to the passengers, and despair seized upon Olivia.
She made a rush for the gangway, she was seized, she was carried
forcibly into the room and stripped of her nun's disguise and coif.
She was kept a prisoner in the room until the _Ariadne_ had left the
Quay. Then she was placed in a carriage and driven back, with an
officer of the police at her side, to the garden door of the
President's house.
Something of this Olivia told me at the time, but she was interrupted
by the return of the officer and a couple of Juan Ballester's
messengers.
"His Excellency will see you," said the officer to her. He conducted
her through the garden and by the private doorway into Ballester's
study. I had followed behind the servants and I remained in the room.
We waited for a few minutes, and Juan himself came in. He went quickly
over to Olivia's side. His voice was all gentleness. But that was his
way with her, and I set no hopes on it.
"I am grieved, Senorita, if you have suffered rougher treatment than
befits you. But you should not have tried to escape."
Olivia looked at him with a piteous helplessness in her eyes. "What am
I to do, then?" she seemed to ask, and, with the question, to lose the
last clutch upon her spirit. For her features quivered, she dropped
into a chair, laid her arms upon the table, and, burying her face in
them, burst into tears.
It was uncomfortable--even for Juan Ballester. There came a look of
trouble in his face, a shadow of compunction. For myself, the heaving
of her young shoulders hurt my eyes, the sound of her young voice
breaking in sobs tortured my ears. But this was not the worst of it,
for she suddenly threw herself back in her chair with the tears wet
upon her cheeks, and, beating the table piteously with the palms of
her hands, she cried:
"I am hungry--oh, so hungry!"
"Good Heavens!" cried Ballester. He started forward, staring into her
face.
"But you knew," said Olivia, and he turned away to one of the
messengers, and bade him bring some supper into the room.
"And be quick," said I.
"Yes, yes, be quick," said Juan.
At last I had the key to her. She had been starving, in that great,
empty house in the Calle Madrid. "A fortnight!" she had cried in
dismay. I understood now the reason of her terror. She had known that
she would have to starve. And she had held her head high, making no
complaint, patiently enduring. It was not her spirit which had failed
her. I cursed myself for a fool as once more I enthroned her. Her face
had grown smaller, her eyes bigger. There was a look of spirituality
which I had not seen before. I had noticed the signs, and I had
misread them. Her lassitude this evening, her vain struggle with the
police, her apathy under their treatment of her, were all explained.
Not her courage, but her body had failed her. She was starving.
A tray was brought in and placed before her. She dried her eyes and
with a sigh she drew her chair in to the table and ate, indifferent to
the presence of Ballester, of the officer who remained at the door,
and of myself. Ballester stood and watched her. "Good Heavens!" he
said again softly, and going to her side he filled her glass with
champagne.
She nodded her thanks and raised it to her lips almost before he had
finished pouring. A little colour came into her cheeks and she turned
again to her supper. She was a healthy girl. There never had been
anything of the drooping lily about Olivia. She had always taken an
interest in her meals, however dainty she might look. The knowledge of
that made her starvation doubly cruel--not only to her. Juan sat down
opposite to her. There was no doubt now about the remorse in his face.
He never took his eyes from her as she ate. Once she looked up and saw
him watching her.
"But you knew," she said. "I was alone in the house. How much money
did you leave there for me when you took my father away? A few dollars
which your men had not discovered."
"But you yourself----" he stammered.
"I was at a ball," said Olivia scornfully. "How much money does a girl
take with her to a ball? Where would she put it?"
There was no answer to that question.
"The next day I went to the bank," she continued. "My father's money
was impounded. You had seen to that. All the unpaid bills came in in a
stream. I couldn't pay them. I could get no credit. You had seen to
that. My friends left me alone. Of course I starved; you knew that I
should. You meant me to," and, with the air of one who has been
wasting time, she turned again to her supper.
"I never thought that you would hold out," stammered Ballester. I had
never seen him in an apologetic mood before, and he looked miserable.
"I hadn't _seen_ that you were starving."
Olivia looked up at him. It was not so much that her face relented, as
that it showed an interest in something beyond her supper.
"Yes," she said, nodding at him. "I think that's true. You hadn't seen
with your own eyes that I was starving. So my starving wasn't very
real to you."
Ballester changed her plate and filled her glass again.
"Ah!" said Olivia with satisfaction, hitching up her chair still
closer. She was really having a good square meal.
"But why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
"I told no one," said Olivia, shaking her head. "I thought that I
could manage till to-night. Once or twice I called on the Gimenos at
luncheon-time, and I had one or two dollars. No; I would tell no one."
"Yes," said Juan, "I understand that. It's the reason why I wanted
you." And at this sign of his comprehension of her, Olivia again
looked at him, and again the interest in her eyes was evident.
At last she pushed back her chair. The tray was removed. Ballester
offered her a cigarette. She smiled faintly as she took it. Certainly
her supper had done her a world of good. She lit her cigarette and
leaned her elbows on the table.
"And now," she said, "what do you mean to do with me?"
Ballester went to his bureau, wrote on a sheet of paper and brought
the paper to Olivia.
"You can show this at the railway-station to-morrow," he said, and he
laid the permit on the table and turned away.
Women are not reasonable people. For the second time that night Olivia
forced me to contemplate that trite reflection. For now that she had
got what she had suffered hunger and indignities to get, she merely
played with it with the tips of her fingers, looking now upon the
table, now at Juan Ballester's back, and now upon the table again.
"And you?" she said gently. "What will become of you?"
I suppose Ballester was the only one in the room who did not notice
the softness of her voice. To me it was extraordinary. He had tortured
her with hunger, exposed her to the gentle methods of his police, yet
the fact that he did these things because he wanted her seemed to make
him suddenly valuable to her now that she was free of him.
Ballester turned round and leaned against the wall with his hands in
his pockets.
"I?" he said. "I shall just stay on alone here until some day someone
gets stronger than I am, perhaps, and puts me up against the wall
outside----"
"Oh, no!" cried Olivia, interrupting him.
"Well, one never knows," said his Excellency, shrugging his shoulders.
He turned to the window and drew aside the curtains. The morning had
come. It was broad daylight outside.
"Unless, Olivia," he added, turning again towards her, "you will
reconsider your refusal to marry me. Together we could do great
things."
It was the most splendid performance of the grand gentleman which
Ballester ever gave. And he knew it. You could see him preening
himself as he spoke. His gesture was as noble as his words. From head
to foot he was the perfect cavalier, and consciousness of the
perfection of his chivalry shone out from him like a nimbus. I looked
quickly towards Olivia--in some alarm for Harry Vandeleur. She had
lowered her head, so that it was impossible to see how she had taken
Ballester's honourable amendment. But when she raised her head again a
smile of satisfaction was just disappearing from her face; and the
smile betrayed her. She had been playing for this revenge from the
moment when she had finished her supper.
"I am honoured, Senor Juan," she said sedately, "but I am already
promised."
Ballester turned abruptly away. Whether he had seen the smile,
whether, if he had seen it, he understood it, I never knew.
"You had better get the Senorita a carriage," he said to the officer
at the door. As the man went out, the music from the ballroom floated
in. Juan Ballester hesitated, and no shock which Olivia had given to
me came near the shock which his next words produced.
"Don Santiago shall have his money. You can draw on it, Senorita,
to-morrow, before you go."
"Thank you," she said.
The messenger reappeared. A carriage was waiting. Olivia rose and
looked at Juan timidly. He walked ceremoniously to the door and held
it open.
"Good night," she said.
He bowed and smiled in a friendly fashion enough, but he did not
answer. It seemed that he had spoken his last word to her. She
hesitated and went out. At once the President took a quick step
towards me.
"Do you know what is said to-night?" he said violently.
I drew back. I could not think what he meant. To tell the truth, I
found him rather alarming.
"No," I answered.
"Why, that I have given this party as a farewell; that I am still
going to bolt from Maldivia. Do you see? I have spent all this money
for nothing."