Through good and evil report in the varying fortune of that struggle
which Don Jose had characterized in the phrase, “the fate of national
honesty trembles in the balance,” the Gould Concession, “Imperium in
Imperio,” had gone on working; the square mountain had gone on pouring
its treasure down the wooden shoots to the unresting batteries of
stamps; the lights of San Tome had twinkled night after night upon the
great, limitless shadow of the Campo; every three months the silver
escort had gone down to the sea as if neither the war nor its
consequences could ever affect the ancient Occidental State secluded
beyond its high barrier of the Cordillera. All the fighting took place
on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated peaks lorded over by
the white dome of Higuerota and as yet unbreached by the railway, of
which only the first part, the easy Campo part from Sulaco to the Ivie
Valley at the foot of the pass, had been laid. Neither did the telegraph
line cross the mountains yet; its poles, like slender beacons on the
plain, penetrated into the forest fringe of the foot-hills cut by
the deep avenue of the track; and its wire ended abruptly in the
construction camp at a white deal table supporting a Morse apparatus,
in a long hut of planks with a corrugated iron roof overshadowed by
gigantic cedar trees--the quarters of the engineer in charge of the
advance section.
The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in railway material, and
with the movements of troops along the coast. The O.S.N. Company found
much occupation for its fleet. Costaguana had no navy, and, apart from a
few coastguard cutters, there were no national ships except a couple of
old merchant steamers used as transports.
Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick of history, found
time for an hour or so during an afternoon in the drawing-room of the
Casa Gould, where, with a strange ignorance of the real forces at work
around him, he professed himself delighted to get away from the
strain of affairs. He did not know what he would have done without his
invaluable Nostromo, he declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics
gave him more work--he confided to Mrs. Gould--than he had bargained
for.
Don Jose Avellanos had displayed in the service of the endangered
Ribiera Government an organizing activity and an eloquence of which
the echoes reached even Europe. For, after the new loan to the Ribiera
Government, Europe had become interested in Costaguana. The Sala of the
Provincial Assembly (in the Municipal Buildings of Sulaco), with its
portraits of the Liberators on the walls and an old flag of Cortez
preserved in a glass case above the President’s chair, had heard all
these speeches--the early one containing the impassioned declaration
“Militarism is the enemy,” the famous one of the “trembling balance”
delivered on the occasion of the vote for the raising of a second
Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming Government; and when the
provinces again displayed their old flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento’s
time) there was another of those great orations, when Don Jose greeted
these old emblems of the war of Independence, brought out again in the
name of new Ideals. The old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For
his part he did not wish to revive old political doctrines. They were
perishable. They died. But the doctrine of political rectitude was
immortal. The second Sulaco regiment, to whom he was presenting this
flag, was going to show its valour in a contest for order, peace,
progress; for the establishment of national self-respect without
which--he declared with energy--“we are a reproach and a byword amongst
the powers of the world.”
Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly with
his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later story of his
captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known
to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not been a victim of
the ferocious and summary executions which marked the course of that
tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of
political fanaticism. The power of Supreme Government had become in his
dull mind an object of strange worship, as if it were some sort of
cruel deity. It was incarnated in himself, and his adversaries, the
Federalists, were the supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and
fear, as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For years he had
carried about at the tail of the Army of Pacification, all over the
country, a captive band of such atrocious criminals, who considered
themselves most unfortunate at not having been summarily executed. It
was a diminishing company of nearly naked skeletons, loaded with irons,
covered with dirt, with vermin, with raw wounds, all men of position,
of education, of wealth, who had learned to fight amongst themselves for
scraps of rotten beef thrown to them by soldiers, or to beg a negro
cook for a drink of muddy water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos,
clanking his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in order to
prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel torture a human
body can stand without parting with the last spark of life. Sometimes
interrogatories, backed by some primitive method of torture, were
administered to them by a commission of officers hastily assembled in a
hut of sticks and branches, and made pitiless by the fear for their own
lives. A lucky one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would
perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a file of soldiers.
Always an army chaplain--some unshaven, dirty man, girt with a sword and
with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on the left breast of
a lieutenant’s uniform--would follow, cigarette in the corner of the
mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the confession and give absolution;
for the Citizen Saviour of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus
officially in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational
clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad would be heard,
followed sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud
of smoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Army of
Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the forests,
crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the haciendas of
the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns in the fulfilment of
its patriotic mission, and leaving behind a united land wherein the evil
taint of Federalism could no longer be detected in the smoke of burning
houses and the smell of spilt blood. Don Jose Avellanos had survived
that time. Perhaps, when contemptuously signifying to him his release,
the Citizen Saviour of the Country might have thought this benighted
aristocrat too broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer
dangerous. Or, perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman Bento,
usually full of fanciful fears and brooding suspicions, had sudden
accesses of unreasonable self-confidence when he perceived himself
elevated on a pinnacle of power and safety beyond the reach of mere
mortal plotters. At such times he would impulsively command the
celebration of a solemn Mass of thanksgiving, which would be sung in
great pomp in the cathedral of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient
Archbishop of his creation. He heard it sitting in a gilt armchair
placed before the high altar, surrounded by the civil and military heads
of his Government. The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into
the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of mark to stay
away from these manifestations of presidential piety. Having thus
acknowledged the only power he was at all disposed to recognize as
above himself, he would scatter acts of political grace in a sardonic
wantonness of clemency. There was no other way left now to enjoy his
power but by seeing his crushed adversaries crawl impotently into the
light of day out of the dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their
harmlessness fed his insatiable vanity, and they could always be got
hold of again. It was the rule for all the women of their families to
present thanks afterwards in a special audience. The incarnation of that
strange god, El Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked hat on
head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter to show their gratitude
by bringing up their children in fidelity to the democratic form of
government, “which I have established for the happiness of our country.”
His front teeth having been knocked out in some accident of his former
herdsman’s life, his utterance was spluttering and indistinct. He
had been working for Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and
opposition. Let it cease now lest he should become weary of forgiving!
Don Jose Avellanos had known this forgiveness.
He was broken in health and fortune deplorably enough to present a truly
gratifying spectacle to the supreme chief of democratic institutions.
He retired to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in that province, and she
nursed him back to life out of the house of death and captivity. When
she died, their daughter, an only child, was old enough to devote
herself to “poor papa.”
Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly in England, was a
tall, grave girl, with a self-possessed manner, a wide, white forehead,
a wealth of rich brown hair, and blue eyes.
The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her character and
accomplishments. She was reputed to be terribly learned and serious. As
to pride, it was well known that all the Corbelans were proud, and her
mother was a Corbelan. Don Jose Avellanos depended very much upon the
devotion of his beloved Antonia. He accepted it in the benighted way of
men, who, though made in God’s image, are like stone idols without sense
before the smoke of certain burnt offerings. He was ruined in every
way, but a man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life. Don Jose
Avellanos desired passionately for his country: peace, prosperity,
and (as the end of the preface to “Fifty Years of Misrule” has it)
“an honourable place in the comity of civilized nations.” In this last
phrase the Minister Plenipotentiary, cruelly humiliated by the bad faith
of his Government towards the foreign bondholders, stands disclosed in
the patriot.
The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the tyranny of Guzman
Bento seemed to bring his desire to the very door of opportunity. He
was too old to descend personally into the centre of the arena at Sta.
Marta. But the men who acted there sought his advice at every step. He
himself thought that he could be most useful at a distance, in Sulaco.
His name, his connections, his former position, his experience commanded
the respect of his class. The discovery that this man, living in
dignified poverty in the Corbelan town residence (opposite the Casa
Gould), could dispose of material means towards the support of the cause
increased his influence. It was his open letter of appeal that decided
the candidature of Don Vincente Ribiera for the Presidency. Another of
these informal State papers drawn up by Don Jose (this time in the
shape of an address from the Province) induced that scrupulous
constitutionalist to accept the extraordinary powers conferred upon him
for five years by an overwhelming vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It
was a specific mandate to establish the prosperity of the people on the
basis of firm peace at home, and to redeem the national credit by the
satisfaction of all just claims abroad.
On the afternoon the news of that vote had reached Sulaco by the usual
roundabout postal way through Cayta, and up the coast by steamer. Don
Jose, who had been waiting for the mail in the Goulds’ drawing-room, got
out of the rocking-chair, letting his hat fall off his knees. He rubbed
his silvery, short hair with both hands, speechless with the excess of
joy.
“Emilia, my soul,” he had burst out, “let me embrace you! Let me--”
Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an apt
remark about the dawn of a new era; but if Don Jose thought something
of the kind, his eloquence failed him on this occasion. The inspirer
of that revival of the Blanco party tottered where he stood. Mrs. Gould
moved forward quickly and, as she offered her cheek with a smile to her
old friend, managed very cleverly to give him the support of her arm he
really needed.
Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a time he could do no
more than murmur, “Oh, you two patriots! Oh, you two patriots!”--looking
from one to the other. Vague plans of another historical work, wherein
all the devotions to the regeneration of the country he loved would be
enshrined for the reverent worship of posterity, flitted through his
mind. The historian who had enough elevation of soul to write of Guzman
Bento: “Yet this monster, imbrued in the blood of his countrymen, must
not be held unreservedly to the execration of future years. It appears
to be true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve years
of peace; and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he was, he
died poor. His worst fault, perhaps, was not his ferocity, but his
ignorance;” the man who could write thus of a cruel persecutor (the
passage occurs in his “History of Misrule”) felt at the foreshadowing of
success an almost boundless affection for his two helpers, for these two
young people from over the sea.
Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practical necessity,
stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn
the sword, so now, the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung
the silver of the San Tome into the fray. The Inglez of Sulaco, the
“Costaguana Englishman” of the third generation, was as far from being
a political intriguer as his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler.
Springing from the instinctive uprightness of their natures their action
was reasoned. They saw an opportunity and used the weapon to hand.
Charles Gould’s position--a commanding position in the background of
that attempt to retrieve the peace and the credit of the Republic--was
very clear. At the beginning he had had to accommodate himself to
existing circumstances of corruption so naively brazen as to disarm the
hate of a man courageous enough not to be afraid of its irresponsible
potency to ruin everything it touched. It seemed to him too contemptible
for hot anger even. He made use of it with a cold, fearless scorn,
manifested rather than concealed by the forms of stony courtesy which
did away with much of the ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps,
he suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly illusions, but
he refused to discuss the ethical view with his wife. He trusted
that, though a little disenchanted, she would be intelligent enough to
understand that his character safeguarded the enterprise of their lives
as much or more than his policy. The extraordinary development of the
mine had put a great power into his hands. To feel that prosperity
always at the mercy of unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him.
To Mrs. Gould it was humiliating. At any rate, it was dangerous. In the
confidential communications passing between Charles Gould, the King
of Sulaco, and the head of the silver and steel interests far away in
California, the conviction was growing that any attempt made by men of
education and integrity ought to be discreetly supported. “You may tell
your friend Avellanos that I think so,” Mr. Holroyd had written at the
proper moment from his inviolable sanctuary within the eleven-storey
high factory of great affairs. And shortly afterwards, with a credit
opened by the Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to the
Holroyd Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana took a practical
shape under the eye of the administrator of the San Tome mine. And Don
Jose, the hereditary friend of the Gould family, could say: “Perhaps, my
dear Carlos, I shall not have believed in vain.”