The vile murderer came up to my poor friend as we were resting in a
_posada_ on the road from San Felipe; and, while engaging him in an
apparently friendly conversation respecting the political points of the
rising, he suddenly stabbed the dear old man in the back with a long
stiletto which he had hidden up his wide shirt sleeves.
Fortunately, I was there, and I had time to send a bullet through his
brain from my revolver before the wretch could stir a yard from the
spot; but this could not save my noble-hearted, kind, generous
protector, a man who had been more than a father to me, and for whom I
had the utmost affection and respect. No; the death of the scoundrel
could not save him, for the wound the cowardly scoundrel had inflicted
was mortal.
My dear friend and companion only survived long enough to confide his
daughter to my care and give me his blessing ere he died, drawing his
last breath in my arms, a smile on his face and dauntless to the end, as
he pressed my hand and uttered the usual parting phrase he had learnt
from his Spanish associates--"_Hasta la manana_--Good-bye till to-
morrow!"
It was a long to-morrow, indeed!
After seeing the last tribute of respect paid to the colonel's remains,
the gallant fellow being buried close to the _posada_ where he had met
with his untimely end, and a cross which I carved myself placed above
his lonely grave, sheltered by a noble palm that stood erect, as he had
done when living, a monument of nature's handiwork, I resumed my journey
to Caracas, in order to carry out my lost friend's last directions.
The _alcalde_, who acted as the colonel's agent and was largely in his
confidence, being an acquaintance of many years' standing, produced a
copy of Colonel Vereker's will for my inspection, assuring me that this
had been drawn up during his last visit to the State capital, while all
his affairs were in the most perfect order, "the poor gentleman," as the
_alcalde_ expressed it, "being under the opinion that he would not have
long to live," a presentiment of death I have often found many people to
have had.
Generous and thoughtful for others to the end, he had not forgotten me
in this his last testament, showing that the regard he had already
displayed for my welfare was no mere temporary fancy!
On the contrary, much to my astonishment, he had bequeathed to me quite
half his fortune--all his share, indeed, in the Gondifera mine--while
all his realised property, which was invested in good English and
American securities, out of the reach of the grasping hand of the
hungerful Venezuelan patriots--all this he left to his daughter Elsie.
From a codicil, too, appended to the document, more in the form of a
sacred charge than a legal instrument, "reading between the lines," I
could perceive that the large-hearted man had fathomed the secret desire
of my heart, though secret it evidently was not to him, loving Elsie as
he did, albeit in a different fashion; for after enjoining upon me to
regard his little daughter's interests even as he had studied mine, he
added that, should fate bring us together in the future, as had happened
so strangely in the past, his dearest wish would be gratified, for he
had already learnt to care for me and to look upon me as his son!
Of course nothing of this was mentioned when writing to tell Elsie of
the awful event and dreadful calamity that had befallen her, although
later on, before I was able to return to England, when her education was
completed and the good nuns wrote to me, as her father's executor, to
say the time had arrived for taking her away from the convent unless she
wished to change her religion and join the sisterhood, to both of which
courses I was, of course, bitterly opposed, and, as you may imagine, was
delighted when Elsie herself requested to be allowed to leave.
I must, however, have accidentally have shown my feelings towards her
and have "let the cat out of the bag" in the letter I sent home to my
mother, in answer to the last communication from Neuilly, asking her to
take charge of my darling Elsie until I came home to win and claim her.
I imagined this from something that leaked out afterwards, and from the
somewhat altered tone of Elsie's letters to me from the date of her
leaving France to live with my mother; for, though affectionate enough,
they had a certain little air of constraint about them, and though she
spoke of various objects of interest to both of us, and of different
persons whom she and I knew, and places she went to, she never by any
chance ever mentioned herself, never after the letters she sent me
containing the passionate outpouring of her inmost heart on receiving
the news of her father's death, albeit all this she would feel perfectly
certain was to me a sacred confidence.
Slight as the change was in her subsequent correspondence, I noticed it
and it worried me, and determined me to have the matter cleared up as
soon as I possibly could.
Meanwhile, however, I had to fulfil the colonel's last trust, and as I
knew what his intentions had been in regard to the crisis in Venezuelan
affairs at the time when an assassin's hand prevented him from acting
the part he intended to play in the existing revolution, I thought I
should be only carrying out his wishes in putting myself in his place,
as far as it lay in my power to do so.
So, soon after coming to Caracas and settling the details of the
colonel's last depositions, making my own will in my turn in case of
accidents, though in what way is best known to myself, I went to the
headquarters of the Government troops and joined the army of General
Gomez.
Under this able leader I fought in several engagements that were fierce
and sanguinary as all such fratricidal contests are, and ever have been
in the annals of civil war, at San Sebastien, Carapana, Tarasca, and
elsewhere, our guerilla struggle extending over the whole extensive
country in almost every direction, where there was a town to sack or
property to plunder, until at last the insurgent "patriots" were
conquered and peace restored.
All this took a long time; and then, having had enough and to spare of
fighting and bloodshed, and tired of mining too, I disposed of my
interest in the Gondifera mine, and at last sailed for Europe, bidding a
long adieu to Venezuela and everything belonging to it, my journey home
being hastened by a somewhat tenderer letter than usual from Elsie, who
had read a paragraph in the papers about my having been wounded at the
battle of San Sebastien, though, of course, I had not mentioned anything
about the affair to her or my mother, as it was a mere flea bite and of
no consequence, and I feared to have alarmed them needlessly had I said
anything about it in my letters to them at home.