Perhaps it was in the exercise of his calling that he had come to see
the troops depart. The Porvenir of the day after next would no doubt
relate the event, but its editor, leaning his side against the landau,
seemed to look at nothing. The front rank of the company of infantry
drawn up three deep across the shore end of the jetty when pressed too
close would bring their bayonets to the charge ferociously, with an
awful rattle; and then the crowd of spectators swayed back bodily,
even under the noses of the big white mules. Notwithstanding the great
multitude there was only a low, muttering noise; the dust hung in a
brown haze, in which the horsemen, wedged in the throng here and there,
towered from the hips upwards, gazing all one way over the heads. Almost
every one of them had mounted a friend, who steadied himself with both
hands grasping his shoulders from behind; and the rims of their hats
touching, made like one disc sustaining the cones of two pointed crowns
with a double face underneath. A hoarse mozo would bawl out something to
an acquaintance in the ranks, or a woman would shriek suddenly the word
Adios! followed by the Christian name of a man.
General Barrios, in a shabby blue tunic and white peg-top trousers
falling upon strange red boots, kept his head uncovered and stooped
slightly, propping himself up with a thick stick. No! He had earned
enough military glory to satiate any man, he insisted to Mrs. Gould,
trying at the same time to put an air of gallantry into his attitude. A
few jetty hairs hung sparsely from his upper lip, he had a salient nose,
a thin, long jaw, and a black silk patch over one eye. His other eye,
small and deep-set, twinkled erratically in all directions, aimlessly
affable. The few European spectators, all men, who had naturally drifted
into the neighbourhood of the Gould carriage, betrayed by the solemnity
of their faces their impression that the general must have had too much
punch (Swedish punch, imported in bottles by Anzani) at the Amarilla
Club before he had started with his Staff on a furious ride to the
harbour. But Mrs. Gould bent forward, self-possessed, and declared her
conviction that still more glory awaited the general in the near future.
“Senora!” he remonstrated, with great feeling, “in the name of God,
reflect! How can there be any glory for a man like me in overcoming that
bald-headed embustero with the dyed moustaches?”
Pablo Ignacio Barrios, son of a village alcalde, general of division,
commanding in chief the Occidental Military district, did not frequent
the higher society of the town. He preferred the unceremonious
gatherings of men where he could tell jaguar-hunt stories, boast of his
powers with the lasso, with which he could perform extremely difficult
feats of the sort “no married man should attempt,” as the saying
goes amongst the llaneros; relate tales of extraordinary night rides,
encounters with wild bulls, struggles with crocodiles, adventures in
the great forests, crossings of swollen rivers. And it was not mere
boastfulness that prompted the general’s reminiscences, but a genuine
love of that wild life which he had led in his young days before he
turned his back for ever on the thatched roof of the parental tolderia
in the woods. Wandering away as far as Mexico he had fought against the
French by the side (as he said) of Juarez, and was the only military
man of Costaguana who had ever encountered European troops in the field.
That fact shed a great lustre upon his name till it became eclipsed
by the rising star of Montero. All his life he had been an inveterate
gambler. He alluded himself quite openly to the current story how once,
during some campaign (when in command of a brigade), he had gambled away
his horses, pistols, and accoutrements, to the very epaulettes, playing
monte with his colonels the night before the battle. Finally, he had
sent under escort his sword (a presentation sword, with a gold hilt) to
the town in the rear of his position to be immediately pledged for five
hundred pesetas with a sleepy and frightened shop-keeper. By daybreak he
had lost the last of that money, too, when his only remark, as he rose
calmly, was, “Now let us go and fight to the death.” From that time he
had become aware that a general could lead his troops into battle
very well with a simple stick in his hand. “It has been my custom ever
since,” he would say.
He was always overwhelmed with debts; even during the periods of
splendour in his varied fortunes of a Costaguana general, when he held
high military commands, his gold-laced uniforms were almost always
in pawn with some tradesman. And at last, to avoid the incessant
difficulties of costume caused by the anxious lenders, he had assumed
a disdain of military trappings, an eccentric fashion of shabby old
tunics, which had become like a second nature. But the faction Barrios
joined needed to fear no political betrayal. He was too much of a real
soldier for the ignoble traffic of buying and selling victories. A
member of the foreign diplomatic body in Sta. Marta had once passed a
judgment upon him: “Barrios is a man of perfect honesty and even of
some talent for war, _mais il manque de tenue_.” After the triumph of the
Ribierists he had obtained the reputedly lucrative Occidental
command, mainly through the exertions of his creditors (the Sta. Marta
shopkeepers, all great politicians), who moved heaven and earth in his
interest publicly, and privately besieged Senor Moraga, the influential
agent of the San Tome mine, with the exaggerated lamentations that if
the general were passed over, “We shall all be ruined.” An incidental
but favourable mention of his name in Mr. Gould senior’s long
correspondence with his son had something to do with his appointment,
too; but most of all undoubtedly his established political honesty. No
one questioned the personal bravery of the Tiger-killer, as the populace
called him. He was, however, said to be unlucky in the field--but this
was to be the beginning of an era of peace. The soldiers liked him
for his humane temper, which was like a strange and precious flower
unexpectedly blooming on the hotbed of corrupt revolutions; and when
he rode slowly through the streets during some military display, the
contemptuous good humour of his solitary eye roaming over the crowds
extorted the acclamations of the populace. The women of that class
especially seemed positively fascinated by the long drooping nose,
the peaked chin, the heavy lower lip, the black silk eyepatch and band
slanting rakishly over the forehead. His high rank always procured an
audience of Caballeros for his sporting stories, which he detailed very
well with a simple, grave enjoyment. As to the society of ladies, it was
irksome by the restraints it imposed without any equivalent, as far as
he could see. He had not, perhaps, spoken three times on the whole to
Mrs. Gould since he had taken up his high command; but he had observed
her frequently riding with the Senor Administrador, and had pronounced
that there was more sense in her little bridle-hand than in all the
female heads in Sulaco. His impulse had been to be very civil on parting
to a woman who did not wobble in the saddle, and happened to be the wife
of a personality very important to a man always short of money. He even
pushed his attentions so far as to desire the aide-de-camp at his side
(a thick-set, short captain with a Tartar physiognomy) to bring along a
corporal with a file of men in front of the carriage, lest the crowd in
its backward surges should “incommode the mules of the senora.” Then,
turning to the small knot of silent Europeans looking on within earshot,
he raised his voice protectingly--
“Senores, have no apprehension. Go on quietly making your Ferro
Carril--your railways, your telegraphs. Your--There’s enough wealth in
Costaguana to pay for everything--or else you would not be here. Ha! ha!
Don’t mind this little picardia of my friend Montero. In a little while
you shall behold his dyed moustaches through the bars of a strong wooden
cage. Si, senores! Fear nothing, develop the country, work, work!”
The little group of engineers received this exhortation without a word,
and after waving his hand at them loftily, he addressed himself again to
Mrs. Gould--
“That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enterprising! Work! Grow
rich! To put Montero in a cage is my work; and when that insignificant
piece of business is done, then, as Don Jose wishes us, we shall grow
rich, one and all, like so many Englishmen, because it is money that
saves a country, and--”
But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying up from the
direction of the jetty, interrupted his interpretation of Senor
Avellanos’s ideals. The general made a movement of impatience; the other
went on talking to him insistently, with an air of respect. The horses
of the Staff had been embarked, the steamer’s gig was awaiting the
general at the boat steps; and Barrios, after a fierce stare of his one
eye, began to take leave. Don Jose roused himself for an appropriate
phrase pronounced mechanically. The terrible strain of hope and fear was
telling on him, and he seemed to husband the last sparks of his fire for
those oratorical efforts of which even the distant Europe was to hear.
Antonia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head behind the raised
fan; and young Decoud, though he felt the girl’s eyes upon him, gazed
away persistently, hooked on his elbow, with a scornful and complete
detachment. Mrs. Gould heroically concealed her dismay at the appearance
of men and events so remote from her racial conventions, dismay too deep
to be uttered in words even to her husband. She understood his voiceless
reserve better now. Their confidential intercourse fell, not in moments
of privacy, but precisely in public, when the quick meeting of their
glances would comment upon some fresh turn of events. She had gone to
his school of uncompromising silence, the only one possible, since so
much that seemed shocking, weird, and grotesque in the working out of
their purposes had to be accepted as normal in this country. Decidedly,
the stately Antonia looked more mature and infinitely calm; but she
would never have known how to reconcile the sudden sinkings of her heart
with an amiable mobility of expression.
Mrs. Gould smiled a good-bye at Barrios, nodded round to the Europeans
(who raised their hats simultaneously) with an engaging invitation, “I
hope to see you all presently, at home”; then said nervously to Decoud,
“Get in, Don Martin,” and heard him mutter to himself in French, as he
opened the carriage door, “_Le sort en est jete_.” She heard him with a
sort of exasperation. Nobody ought to have known better than himself
that the first cast of dice had been already thrown long ago in a most
desperate game. Distant acclamations, words of command yelled out, and a
roll of drums on the jetty greeted the departing general. Something like
a slight faintness came over her, and she looked blankly at Antonia’s
still face, wondering what would happen to Charley if that absurd man
failed. “A la casa, Ignacio,” she cried at the motionless broad back of
the coachman, who gathered the reins without haste, mumbling to himself
under his breath, “Si, la casa. Si, si nina.”
The carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft track, the shadows fell
long on the dusty little plain interspersed with dark bushes, mounds
of turned-up earth, low wooden buildings with iron roofs of the Railway
Company; the sparse row of telegraph poles strode obliquely clear of
the town, bearing a single, almost invisible wire far into the great
campo--like a slender, vibrating feeler of that progress waiting outside
for a moment of peace to enter and twine itself about the weary heart of
the land.
The cafe window of the Albergo d’ltalia Una was full of sunburnt,
whiskered faces of railway men. But at the other end of the house, the
end of the Signori Inglesi, old Giorgio, at the door with one of his
girls on each side, bared his bushy head, as white as the snows of
Higuerota. Mrs. Gould stopped the carriage. She seldom failed to speak
to her protege; moreover, the excitement, the heat, and the dust had
made her thirsty. She asked for a glass of water. Giorgio sent the
children indoors for it, and approached with pleasure expressed in his
whole rugged countenance. It was not often that he had occasion to see
his benefactress, who was also an Englishwoman--another title to his
regard. He offered some excuses for his wife. It was a bad day with her;
her oppressions--he tapped his own broad chest. She could not move from
her chair that day.
Decoud, ensconced in the corner of his seat, observed gloomily Mrs.
Gould’s old revolutionist, then, offhand--
“Well, and what do you think of it all, Garibaldino?”
Old Giorgio, looking at him with some curiosity, said civilly that the
troops had marched very well. One-eyed Barrios and his officers had done
wonders with the recruits in a short time. Those Indios, only caught
the other day, had gone swinging past in double quick time, like
bersaglieri; they looked well fed, too, and had whole uniforms.
“Uniforms!” he repeated with a half-smile of pity. A look of grim
retrospect stole over his piercing, steady eyes. It had been otherwise
in his time when men fought against tyranny, in the forests of Brazil,
or on the plains of Uruguay, starving on half-raw beef without salt,
half naked, with often only a knife tied to a stick for a weapon. “And
yet we used to prevail against the oppressor,” he concluded, proudly.
His animation fell; the slight gesture of his hand expressed
discouragement; but he added that he had asked one of the sergeants to
show him the new rifle. There was no such weapon in his fighting days;
and if Barrios could not--
“Yes, yes,” broke in Don Jose, almost trembling with eagerness. “We are
safe. The good Senor Viola is a man of experience. Extremely deadly--is
it not so? You have accomplished your mission admirably, my dear
Martin.”
Decoud, lolling back moodily, contemplated old Viola.
“Ah! Yes. A man of experience. But who are you for, really, in your
heart?”
Mrs. Gould leaned over to the children. Linda had brought out a glass of
water on a tray, with extreme care; Giselle presented her with a bunch
of flowers gathered hastily.
“For the people,” declared old Viola, sternly.
“We are all for the people--in the end.”
“Yes,” muttered old Viola, savagely. “And meantime they fight for you.
Blind. Esclavos!”
At that moment young Scarfe of the railway staff emerged from the
door of the part reserved for the Signori Inglesi. He had come down to
headquarters from somewhere up the line on a light engine, and had had
just time to get a bath and change his clothes. He was a nice boy, and
Mrs. Gould welcomed him.
“It’s a delightful surprise to see you, Mrs. Gould. I’ve just come down.
Usual luck. Missed everything, of course. This show is just over, and I
hear there has been a great dance at Don Juste Lopez’s last night. Is it
true?”
“The young patricians,” Decoud began suddenly in his precise English,
“have indeed been dancing before they started off to the war with the
Great Pompey.”
Young Scarfe stared, astounded. “You haven’t met before,” Mrs. Gould
intervened. “Mr. Decoud--Mr. Scarfe.”
“Ah! But we are not going to Pharsalia,” protested Don Jose, with
nervous haste, also in English. “You should not jest like this, Martin.”
Antonia’s breast rose and fell with a deeper breath. The young engineer
was utterly in the dark. “Great what?” he muttered, vaguely.
“Luckily, Montero is not a Caesar,” Decoud continued. “Not the two
Monteros put together would make a decent parody of a Caesar.” He
crossed his arms on his breast, looking at Senor Avellanos, who had
returned to his immobility. “It is only you, Don Jose, who are a genuine
old Roman--vir Romanus--eloquent and inflexible.”
Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced, young Scarfe had been
eager to express his simple feelings. In a loud and youthful tone he
hoped that this Montero was going to be licked once for all and done
with. There was no saying what would happen to the railway if the
revolution got the upper hand. Perhaps it would have to be abandoned.
It would not be the first railway gone to pot in Costaguana. “You know,
it’s one of their so-called national things,” he ran on, wrinkling
up his nose as if the word had a suspicious flavour to his profound
experience of South American affairs. And, of course, he chatted with
animation, it had been such an immense piece of luck for him at his
age to get appointed on the staff “of a big thing like that--don’t you
know.” It would give him the pull over a lot of chaps all through life,
he asserted. “Therefore--down with Montero! Mrs. Gould.” His artless
grin disappeared slowly before the unanimous gravity of the faces turned
upon him from the carriage; only that “old chap,” Don Jose, presenting a
motionless, waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not
know the Avellanos very well. They did not give balls, and Antonia never
appeared at a ground-floor window, as some other young ladies used to do
attended by elder women, to chat with the caballeros on horseback in
the Calle. The stares of these creoles did not matter much; but what on
earth had come to Mrs. Gould? She said, “Go on, Ignacio,” and gave him
a slow inclination of the head. He heard a short laugh from that
round-faced, Frenchified fellow. He coloured up to the eyes, and stared
at Giorgio Viola, who had fallen back with the children, hat in hand.
“I shall want a horse presently,” he said with some asperity to the old
man.
“Si, senor. There are plenty of horses,” murmured the Garibaldino,
smoothing absently, with his brown hands, the two heads, one dark with
bronze glints, the other fair with a coppery ripple, of the two girls by
his side. The returning stream of sightseers raised a great dust on the
road. Horsemen noticed the group. “Go to your mother,” he said. “They
are growing up as I am growing older, and there is nobody--”
He looked at the young engineer and stopped, as if awakened from a
dream; then, folding his arms on his breast, took up his usual position,
leaning back in the doorway with an upward glance fastened on the white
shoulder of Higuerota far away.
In the carriage Martin Decoud, shifting his position as though he could
not make himself comfortable, muttered as he swayed towards Antonia, “I
suppose you hate me.” Then in a loud voice he began to congratulate Don
Jose upon all the engineers being convinced Ribierists. The interest of
all those foreigners was gratifying. “You have heard this one. He is an
enlightened well-wisher. It is pleasant to think that the prosperity of
Costaguana is of some use to the world.”
“He is very young,” Mrs. Gould remarked, quietly.
“And so very wise for his age,” retorted Decoud. “But here we have the
naked truth from the mouth of that child. You are right, Don Jose. The
natural treasures of Costaguana are of importance to the progressive
Europe represented by this youth, just as three hundred years ago
the wealth of our Spanish fathers was a serious object to the rest
of Europe--as represented by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of
futility upon our character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and
materialism, high-sounding sentiments and a supine morality, violent
efforts for an idea and a sullen acquiescence in every form of
corruption. We convulsed a continent for our independence only to
become the passive prey of a democratic parody, the helpless victims
of scoundrels and cut-throats, our institutions a mockery, our laws a
farce--a Guzman Bento our master! And we have sunk so low that when
a man like you has awakened our conscience, a stupid barbarian of a
Montero--Great Heavens! a Montero!--becomes a deadly danger, and an
ignorant, boastful Indio, like Barrios, is our defender.”
But Don Jose, disregarding the general indictment as though he had
not heard a word of it, took up the defence of Barrios. The man was
competent enough for his special task in the plan of campaign. It
consisted in an offensive movement, with Cayta as base, upon the flank
of the Revolutionist forces advancing from the south against Sta. Marta,
which was covered by another army with the President-Dictator in its
midst. Don Jose became quite animated with a great flow of speech,
bending forward anxiously under the steady eyes of his daughter. Decoud,
as if silenced by so much ardour, did not make a sound. The bells of the
city were striking the hour of Oracion when the carriage rolled under
the old gateway facing the harbour like a shapeless monument of leaves
and stones. The rumble of wheels under the sonorous arch was traversed
by a strange, piercing shriek, and Decoud, from his back seat, had a
view of the people behind the carriage trudging along the road outside,
all turning their heads, in sombreros and rebozos, to look at a
locomotive which rolled quickly out of sight behind Giorgio Viola’s
house, under a white trail of steam that seemed to vanish in the
breathless, hysterically prolonged scream of warlike triumph. And it
was all like a fleeting vision, the shrieking ghost of a railway engine
fleeing across the frame of the archway, behind the startled movement
of the people streaming back from a military spectacle with silent
footsteps on the dust of the road. It was a material train returning
from the Campo to the palisaded yards. The empty cars rolled lightly
on the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor of the
ground. The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with the salute
of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before entering the yard;
and when the ear-splitting screech of the steam-whistle for the brakes
had stopped, a series of hard, battering shocks, mingled with the
clanking of chain-couplings, made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters
under the vault of the gate.