Directly they were alone, the colonel’s severe official manner changed.
He rose and approached the doctor. His eyes shone with rapacity and
hope; he became confidential. “The silver might have been indeed put on
board the lighter, but it was not conceivable that it should have been
taken out to sea.” The doctor, watching every word, nodded slightly,
smoking with apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him
as a sign of his friendly intentions. The doctor’s manner of cold
detachment from the rest of the Europeans led Sotillo on, till, from
conjecture to conjecture, he arrived at hinting that in his opinion this
was a putup job on the part of Charles Gould, in order to get hold
of that immense treasure all to himself. The doctor, observant and
self-possessed, muttered, “He is very capable of that.”
Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement, amusement, and
indignation, “You said that of Charles Gould!” Disgust, and even some
suspicion, crept into his tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans,
there appeared to be something dubious about the doctor’s personality.
“What on earth made you say that to this watch-stealing scoundrel?”
he asked. “What’s the object of an infernal lie of that sort? That
confounded pick-pocket was quite capable of believing you.”
He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent in the dark.
“Yes, that is exactly what I did say,” he uttered at last, in a tone
which would have made it clear enough to a third party that the pause
was not of a reluctant but of a reflective character. Captain Mitchell
thought that he had never heard anything so brazenly impudent in his
life.
“Well, well!” he muttered to himself, but he had not the heart to voice
his thoughts. They were swept away by others full of astonishment and
regret. A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed him: the loss of the
silver, the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a blow to his
sensibilities, because he had become attached to his Capataz as people
get attached to their inferiors from love of ease and almost unconscious
gratitude. And when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his
sensibility was almost overcome by this miserable end. What a heavy
blow for that poor young woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the
species of crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young
men paying attentions to young women. It seemed to him a natural and
proper thing. Proper especially. As to sailors, it was different; it was
not their place to marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as
a matter of self-denial, for, he explained, life on board ship is not
fit for a woman even at best, and if you leave her on shore, first of
all it is not fair, and next she either suffers from it or doesn’t care
a bit, which, in both cases, is bad. He couldn’t have told what upset
him most--Charles Gould’s immense material loss, the death of Nostromo,
which was a heavy loss to himself, or the idea of that beautiful and
accomplished young woman being plunged into mourning.
“Yes,” the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began again, “he
believed me right enough. I thought he would have hugged me. ‘Si, si,’
he said, ‘he will write to that partner of his, the rich Americano in
San Francisco, that it is all lost. Why not? There is enough to share
with many people.’”
“But this is perfectly imbecile!” cried Captain Mitchell.
The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and that his imbecility
was ingenious enough to lead him completely astray. He had helped him
only but a little way.
“I mentioned,” the doctor said, “in a sort of casual way, that treasure
is generally buried in the earth rather than set afloat upon the sea.
At this my Sotillo slapped his forehead. ‘Por Dios, yes,’ he said; ‘they
must have buried it on the shores of this harbour somewhere before they
sailed out.’”
“Heavens and earth!” muttered Captain Mitchell, “I should not have
believed that anybody could be ass enough--” He paused, then went on
mournfully: “But what’s the good of all this? It would have been a
clever enough lie if the lighter had been still afloat. It would have
kept that inconceivable idiot perhaps from sending out the steamer to
cruise in the gulf. That was the danger that worried me no end.” Captain
Mitchell sighed profoundly.
“I had an object,” the doctor pronounced, slowly.
“Had you?” muttered Captain Mitchell. “Well, that’s lucky, or else
I would have thought that you went on fooling him for the fun of the
thing. And perhaps that was your object. Well, I must say I personally
wouldn’t condescend to that sort of thing. It is not to my taste. No,
no. Blackening a friend’s character is not my idea of fun, if it were to
fool the greatest blackguard on earth.”
Had it not been for Captain Mitchell’s depression, caused by the fatal
news, his disgust of Dr. Monygham would have taken a more outspoken
shape; but he thought to himself that now it really did not matter what
that man, whom he had never liked, would say and do.
“I wonder,” he grumbled, “why they have shut us up together, or why
Sotillo should have shut you up at all, since it seems to me you have
been fairly chummy up there?”
“Yes, I wonder,” said the doctor grimly.
Captain Mitchell’s heart was so heavy that he would have preferred
for the time being a complete solitude to the best of company. But
any company would have been preferable to the doctor’s, at whom he had
always looked askance as a sort of beachcomber of superior intelligence
partly reclaimed from his abased state. That feeling led him to ask--
“What has that ruffian done with the other two?”
“The chief engineer he would have let go in any case,” said the doctor.
“He wouldn’t like to have a quarrel with the railway upon his hands.
Not just yet, at any rate. I don’t think, Captain Mitchell, that you
understand exactly what Sotillo’s position is--”
“I don’t see why I should bother my head about it,” snarled Captain
Mitchell.
“No,” assented the doctor, with the same grim composure. “I don’t see
why you should. It wouldn’t help a single human being in the world if
you thought ever so hard upon any subject whatever.”
“No,” said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with evident depression. “A man
locked up in a confounded dark hole is not much use to anybody.”
“As to old Viola,” the doctor continued, as though he had not heard,
“Sotillo released him for the same reason he is presently going to
release you.”
“Eh? What?” exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring like an owl in the
darkness. “What is there in common between me and old Viola? More likely
because the old chap has no watch and chain for the pickpocket to steal.
And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham,” he went on with rising choler, “he
will find it more difficult than he thinks to get rid of me. He will
burn his fingers over that job yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I
won’t go without my watch, and as to the rest--we shall see. I dare say
it is no great matter for you to be locked up. But Joe Mitchell is a
different kind of man, sir. I don’t mean to submit tamely to insult and
robbery. I am a public character, sir.”
And then Captain Mitchell became aware that the bars of the opening had
become visible, a black grating upon a square of grey. The coming of the
day silenced Captain Mitchell as if by the reflection that now in all
the future days he would be deprived of the invaluable services of his
Capataz. He leaned against the wall with his arms folded on his breast,
and the doctor walked up and down the whole length of the place with his
peculiar hobbling gait, as if slinking about on damaged feet. At the end
furthest from the grating he would be lost altogether in the darkness.
Only the slight limping shuffle could be heard. There was an air of
moody detachment in that painful prowl kept up without a pause. When the
door of the prison was suddenly flung open and his name shouted out he
showed no surprise. He swerved sharply in his walk, and passed out
at once, as though much depended upon his speed; but Captain Mitchell
remained for some time with his shoulders against the wall, quite
undecided in the bitterness of his spirit whether it wouldn’t be better
to refuse to stir a limb in the way of protest. He had half a mind to
get himself carried out, but after the officer at the door had
shouted three or four times in tones of remonstrance and surprise he
condescended to walk out.
Sotillo’s manner had changed. The colonel’s off-hand civility was
slightly irresolute, as though he were in doubt if civility were the
proper course in this case. He observed Captain Mitchell attentively
before he spoke from the big armchair behind the table in a
condescending voice--
“I have concluded not to detain you, Senor Mitchell. I am of a forgiving
disposition. I make allowances. Let this be a lesson to you, however.”
The peculiar dawn of Sulaco, which seems to break far away to the
westward and creep back into the shade of the mountains, mingled with
the reddish light of the candles. Captain Mitchell, in sign of contempt
and indifference, let his eyes roam all over the room, and he gave a
hard stare to the doctor, perched already on the casement of one of the
windows, with his eyelids lowered, careless and thoughtful--or perhaps
ashamed.
Sotillo, ensconced in the vast armchair, remarked, “I should have
thought that the feelings of a caballero would have dictated to you an
appropriate reply.”
He waited for it, but Captain Mitchell remaining mute, more from extreme
resentment than from reasoned intention, Sotillo hesitated, glanced
towards the doctor, who looked up and nodded, then went on with a slight
effort--
“Here, Senor Mitchell, is your watch. Learn how hasty and unjust has
been your judgment of my patriotic soldiers.”
Lying back in his seat, he extended his arm over the table and pushed
the watch away slightly. Captain Mitchell walked up with undisguised
eagerness, put it to his ear, then slipped it into his pocket coolly.
Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance. Again he looked aside
at the doctor, who stared at him unwinkingly.
But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, without as much as a nod or a
glance, he hastened to say--
“You may go and wait downstairs for the senor doctor, whom I am going to
liberate, too. You foreigners are insignificant, to my mind.”
He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself, while Captain
Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him with some interest.
“The law shall take note later on of your transgressions,” Sotillo
hurried on. “But as for me, you can live free, unguarded, unobserved.
Do you hear, Senor Mitchell? You may depart to your affairs. You are
beneath my notice. My attention is claimed by matters of the very
highest importance.”
Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an answer. It displeased
him to be liberated insultingly; but want of sleep, prolonged anxieties,
a profound disappointment with the fatal ending of the silver-saving
business weighed upon his spirits. It was as much as he could do to
conceal his uneasiness, not about himself perhaps, but about things
in general. It occurred to him distinctly that something underhand was
going on. As he went out he ignored the doctor pointedly.
“A brute!” said Sotillo, as the door shut.
Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and, thrusting his hands into
the pockets of the long, grey dust coat he was wearing, made a few steps
into the room.
Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way, examined him from
head to foot.
“So your countrymen do not confide in you very much, senor doctor. They
do not love you, eh? Why is that, I wonder?”
The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, lifeless stare and the
words, “Perhaps because I have lived too long in Costaguana.”
Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black moustache.
“Aha! But you love yourself,” he said, encouragingly.
“If you leave them alone,” the doctor said, looking with the same
lifeless stare at Sotillo’s handsome face, “they will betray themselves
very soon. Meantime, I may try to make Don Carlos speak?”
“Ah! senor doctor,” said Sotillo, wagging his head, “you are a man of
quick intelligence. We were made to understand each other.” He turned
away. He could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless stare,
which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable emptiness like the black
depth of an abyss.
Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there remains an
appreciation of rascality which, being conventional, is perfectly clear.
Sotillo thought that Dr. Monygham, so different from all Europeans, was
ready to sell his countrymen and Charles Gould, his employer, for some
share of the San Tome silver. Sotillo did not despise him for that. The
colonel’s want of moral sense was of a profound and innocent character.
It bordered upon stupidity, moral stupidity. Nothing that served his
ends could appear to him really reprehensible. Nevertheless, he despised
Dr. Monygham. He had for him an immense and satisfactory contempt.
He despised him with all his heart because he did not mean to let the
doctor have any reward at all. He despised him, not as a man without
faith and honour, but as a fool. Dr. Monygham’s insight into his
character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore he thought the
doctor a fool.
Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel’s ideas had undergone some
modification.
He no longer wished for a political career in Montero’s administration.
He had always doubted the safety of that course. Since he had learned
from the chief engineer that at daylight most likely he would
be confronted by Pedro Montero his misgivings on that point had
considerably increased. The guerrillero brother of the general--the
Pedrito of popular speech--had a reputation of his own. He wasn’t safe
to deal with. Sotillo had vaguely planned seizing not only the treasure
but the town itself, and then negotiating at leisure. But in the face of
facts learned from the chief engineer (who had frankly disclosed to him
the whole situation) his audacity, never of a very dashing kind, had
been replaced by a most cautious hesitation.
“An army--an army crossed the mountains under Pedrito already,” he had
repeated, unable to hide his consternation. “If it had not been that I
am given the news by a man of your position I would never have believed
it. Astonishing!”
“An armed force,” corrected the engineer, suavely. His aim was attained.
It was to keep Sulaco clear of any armed occupation for a few hours
longer, to let those whom fear impelled leave the town. In the general
dismay there were families hopeful enough to fly upon the road towards
Los Hatos, which was left open by the withdrawal of the armed rabble
under Senores Fuentes and Gamacho, to Rincon, with their enthusiastic
welcome for Pedro Montero. It was a hasty and risky exodus, and it was
said that Hernandez, occupying with his band the woods about Los Hatos,
was receiving the fugitives. That a good many people he knew were
contemplating such a flight had been well known to the chief engineer.
Father Corbelan’s efforts in the cause of that most pious robber had not
been altogether fruitless. The political chief of Sulaco had yielded
at the last moment to the urgent entreaties of the priest, had signed a
provisional nomination appointing Hernandez a general, and calling upon
him officially in this new capacity to preserve order in the town. The
fact is that the political chief, seeing the situation desperate, did
not care what he signed. It was the last official document he signed
before he left the palace of the Intendencia for the refuge of the
O.S.N. Company’s office. But even had he meant his act to be effective
it was already too late. The riot which he feared and expected broke out
in less than an hour after Father Corbelan had left him. Indeed, Father
Corbelan, who had appointed a meeting with Nostromo in the Dominican
Convent, where he had his residence in one of the cells, never managed
to reach the place. From the Intendencia he had gone straight on to the
Avellanos’s house to tell his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there
no more than half an hour he had found himself cut off from his ascetic
abode. Nostromo, after waiting there for some time, watching uneasily
the increasing uproar in the street, had made his way to the offices of
the Porvenir, and stayed there till daylight, as Decoud had mentioned
in the letter to his sister. Thus the Capataz, instead of riding towards
the Los Hatos woods as bearer of Hernandez’s nomination, had remained in
town to save the life of the President Dictator, to assist in repressing
the outbreak of the mob, and at last to sail out with the silver of the
mine.
But Father Corbelan, escaping to Hernandez, had the document in his
pocket, a piece of official writing turning a bandit into a general in
a memorable last official act of the Ribierist party, whose watchwords
were honesty, peace, and progress. Probably neither the priest nor the
bandit saw the irony of it. Father Corbelan must have found messengers
to send into the town, for early on the second day of the disturbances
there were rumours of Hernandez being on the road to Los Hatos ready
to receive those who would put themselves under his protection. A
strange-looking horseman, elderly and audacious, had appeared in the
town, riding slowly while his eyes examined the fronts of the houses,
as though he had never seen such high buildings before. Before the
cathedral he had dismounted, and, kneeling in the middle of the Plaza,
his bridle over his arm and his hat lying in front of him on the ground,
had bowed his head, crossing himself and beating his breast for some
little time. Remounting his horse, with a fearless but not unfriendly
look round the little gathering formed about his public devotions, he
had asked for the Casa Avellanos. A score of hands were extended in
answer, with fingers pointing up the Calle de la Constitucion.
The horseman had gone on with only a glance of casual curiosity upwards
to the windows of the Amarilla Club at the corner. His stentorian voice
shouted periodically in the empty street, “Which is the Casa Avellanos?”
till an answer came from the scared porter, and he disappeared under
the gate. The letter he was bringing, written by Father Corbelan with
a pencil by the camp-fire of Hernandez, was addressed to Don Jose, of
whose critical state the priest was not aware. Antonia read it, and,
after consulting Charles Gould, sent it on for the information of the
gentlemen garrisoning the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made
up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the last day--the last
hours perhaps--of her father’s life to the keeping of the bandit, whose
existence was a protest against the irresponsible tyranny of all parties
alike, against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos
woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band
less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle’s obstinate
defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief in the man whom
she loved.
In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his head for Hernandez’s
fidelity. As to his power, he pointed out that he had remained unsubdued
for so many years. In that letter Decoud’s idea of the new Occidental
State (whose flourishing and stable condition is a matter of common
knowledge now) was for the first time made public and used as an
argument. Hernandez, ex-bandit and the last general of Ribierist
creation, was confident of being able to hold the tract of country
between the woods of Los Hatos and the coast range till that devoted
patriot, Don Martin Decoud, could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco
for the reconquest of the town.
“Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side,” wrote Father
Corbelan; there was no time to reflect upon or to controvert his
statement; and if the discussion started upon the reading of that letter
in the Amarilla Club was violent, it was also shortlived. In the
general bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at the idea with joyful
astonishment as upon the amazing discovery of a new hope. Others became
fascinated by the prospect of immediate personal safety for their women
and children. The majority caught at it as a drowning man catches at
a straw. Father Corbelan was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from
Pedrito Montero with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
with their armed rabble.
All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discussion went on in
the big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even those members posted at the
windows with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street in
case of an offensive return of the populace shouted their opinions and
arguments over their shoulders. As dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting
those caballeros who were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew
into the corredor, where at a little table in the light of two
candles he busied himself in composing an address, or rather a solemn
declaration to be presented to Pedrito Montero by a deputation of such
members of Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea was
to propitiate him in order to save the form at least of parliamentary
institutions. Seated before a blank sheet of paper, a goose-quill pen in
his hand and surged upon from all sides, he turned to the right and to
the left, repeating with solemn insistence--
“Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of silence! We ought to make
it clear that we bow in all good faith to the accomplished facts.”
The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a melancholy
satisfaction. The hubbub of voices round him was growing strained and
hoarse. In the sudden pauses the excited grimacing of the faces would
sink all at once into the stillness of profound dejection.
Meantime, the exodus had begun. Carretas full of ladies and children
rolled swaying across the Plaza, with men walking or riding by their
side; mounted parties followed on mules and horses; the poorest were
setting out on foot, men and women carrying bundles, clasping babies in
their arms, leading old people, dragging along the bigger children. When
Charles Gould, after leaving the doctor and the engineer at the Casa
Viola, entered the town by the harbour gate, all those that had meant to
go were gone, and the others had barricaded themselves in their houses.
In the whole dark street there was only one spot of flickering lights
and moving figures, where the Senor Administrador recognized his wife’s
carriage waiting at the door of the Avellanos’s house. He rode up,
almost unnoticed, and looked on without a word while some of his own
servants came out of the gate carrying Don Jose Avellanos, who, with
closed eyes and motionless features, appeared perfectly lifeless. His
wife and Antonia walked on each side of the improvised stretcher, which
was put at once into the carriage. The two women embraced; while from
the other side of the landau Father Corbelan’s emissary, with his ragged
beard all streaked with grey, and high, bronzed cheek-bones, stared,
sitting upright in the saddle. Then Antonia, dry-eyed, got in by the
side of the stretcher, and, after making the sign of the cross rapidly,
lowered a thick veil upon her face. The servants and the three or four
neighbours who had come to assist, stood back, uncovering their heads.
On the box, Ignacio, resigned now to driving all night (and to having
perhaps his throat cut before daylight) looked back surlily over his
shoulder.
“Drive carefully,” cried Mrs. Gould in a tremulous voice.
“Si, carefully; si nina,” he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round
leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of the
light.
“I will see them as far as the ford,” said Charles Gould to his wife.
She stood on the edge of the sidewalk with her hands clasped lightly,
and nodded to him as he followed after the carriage. And now the windows
of the Amarilla Club were dark. The last spark of resistance had died
out. Turning his head at the corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing
over to their own gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of
their neighbours, a well-known merchant and landowner of the province,
followed at her elbow, talking with great gestures. As she passed in all
the lights went out in the street, which remained dark and empty from
end to end.
The houses of the vast Plaza were lost in the night. High up, like a
star, there was a small gleam in one of the towers of the cathedral;
and the equestrian statue gleamed pale against the black trees of the
Alameda, like a ghost of royalty haunting the scenes of revolution. The
rare prowlers they met ranged themselves against the wall. Beyond the
last houses the carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust,
and with a greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall from
the foliage of the trees bordering the country road. The emissary from
Hernandez’s camp pushed his horse close to Charles Gould.
“Caballero,” he said in an interested voice, “you are he whom they call
the King of Sulaco, the master of the mine? Is it not so?”
“Yes, I am the master of the mine,” answered Charles Gould.
The man cantered for a time in silence, then said, “I have a brother, a
sereno in your service in the San Tome valley. You have proved yourself
a just man. There has been no wrong done to any one since you called
upon the people to work in the mountains. My brother says that no
official of the Government, no oppressor of the Campo, has been seen on
your side of the stream. Your own officials do not oppress the people
in the gorge. Doubtless they are afraid of your severity. You are a just
man and a powerful one,” he added.
He spoke in an abrupt, independent tone, but evidently he was
communicative with a purpose. He told Charles Gould that he had been
a ranchero in one of the lower valleys, far south, a neighbour of
Hernandez in the old days, and godfather to his eldest boy; one of those
who joined him in his resistance to the recruiting raid which was the
beginning of all their misfortunes. It was he that, when his compadre
had been carried off, had buried his wife and children, murdered by the
soldiers.
“Si, senor,” he muttered, hoarsely, “I and two or three others, the
lucky ones left at liberty, buried them all in one grave near the ashes
of their ranch, under the tree that had shaded its roof.”
It was to him, too, that Hernandez came after he had deserted, three
years afterwards. He had still his uniform on with the sergeant’s
stripes on the sleeve, and the blood of his colonel upon his hands and
breast. Three troopers followed him, of those who had started in pursuit
but had ridden on for liberty. And he told Charles Gould how he and
a few friends, seeing those soldiers, lay in ambush behind some rocks
ready to pull the trigger on them, when he recognized his compadre and
jumped up from cover, shouting his name, because he knew that
Hernandez could not have been coming back on an errand of injustice and
oppression. Those three soldiers, together with the party who lay
behind the rocks, had formed the nucleus of the famous band, and he, the
narrator, had been the favourite lieutenant of Hernandez for many, many
years. He mentioned proudly that the officials had put a price upon his
head, too; but it did not prevent it getting sprinkled with grey upon
his shoulders. And now he had lived long enough to see his compadre made
a general.
He had a burst of muffled laughter. “And now from robbers we have become
soldiers. But look, Caballero, at those who made us soldiers and him a
general! Look at these people!”
Ignacio shouted. The light of the carriage lamps, running along the
nopal hedges that crowned the bank on each side, flashed upon the scared
faces of people standing aside in the road, sunk deep, like an English
country lane, into the soft soil of the Campo. They cowered; their eyes
glistened very big for a second; and then the light, running on, fell
upon the half-denuded roots of a big tree, on another stretch of nopal
hedge, caught up another bunch of faces glaring back apprehensively.
Three women--of whom one was carrying a child--and a couple of men in
civilian dress--one armed with a sabre and another with a gun--were
grouped about a donkey carrying two bundles tied up in blankets. Further
on Ignacio shouted again to pass a carreta, a long wooden box on two
high wheels, with the door at the back swinging open. Some ladies in it
must have recognized the white mules, because they screamed out, “Is it
you, Dona Emilia?”
At the turn of the road the glare of a big fire filled the short stretch
vaulted over by the branches meeting overhead. Near the ford of a
shallow stream a roadside rancho of woven rushes and a roof of grass had
been set on fire by accident, and the flames, roaring viciously, lit
up an open space blocked with horses, mules, and a distracted, shouting
crowd of people. When Ignacio pulled up, several ladies on foot assailed
the carriage, begging Antonia for a seat. To their clamour she answered
by pointing silently to her father.
“I must leave you here,” said Charles Gould, in the uproar. The flames
leaped up sky-high, and in the recoil from the scorching heat across the
road the stream of fugitives pressed against the carriage. A middle-aged
lady dressed in black silk, but with a coarse manta over her head and a
rough branch for a stick in her hand, staggered against the front wheel.
Two young girls, frightened and silent, were clinging to her arms.
Charles Gould knew her very well.
“Misericordia! We are getting terribly bruised in this crowd!” she
exclaimed, smiling up courageously to him. “We have started on foot. All
our servants ran away yesterday to join the democrats. We are going to
put ourselves under the protection of Father Corbelan, of your sainted
uncle, Antonia. He has wrought a miracle in the heart of a most
merciless robber. A miracle!”
She raised her voice gradually up to a scream as she was borne along by
the pressure of people getting out of the way of some carts coming up
out of the ford at a gallop, with loud yells and cracking of whips.
Great masses of sparks mingled with black smoke flew over the road;
the bamboos of the walls detonated in the fire with the sound of an
irregular fusillade. And then the bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving
only a red dusk crowded with aimless dark shadows drifting in contrary
directions; the noise of voices seemed to die away with the flame;
and the tumult of heads, arms, quarrelling, and imprecations passed on
fleeing into the darkness.
“I must leave you now,” repeated Charles Gould to Antonia. She turned
her head slowly and uncovered her face. The emissary and compadre of
Hernandez spurred his horse close up.
“Has not the master of the mine any message to send to Hernandez, the
master of the Campo?”
The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his
determined purpose he held the mine, and the indomitable bandit held
the Campo by the same precarious tenure. They were equals before the
lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disentangle one’s activity
from its debasing contacts. A close-meshed net of crime and corruption
lay upon the whole country. An immense and weary discouragement sealed
his lips for a time.
“You are a just man,” urged the emissary of Hernandez. “Look at those
people who made my compadre a general and have turned us all into
soldiers. Look at those oligarchs fleeing for life, with only the
clothes on their backs. My compadre does not think of that, but our
followers may be wondering greatly, and I would speak for them to you.
Listen, senor! For many months now the Campo has been our own. We
need ask no man for anything; but soldiers must have their pay to live
honestly when the wars are over. It is believed that your soul is so
just that a prayer from you would cure the sickness of every beast, like
the orison of the upright judge. Let me have some words from your lips
that would act like a charm upon the doubts of our partida, where all
are men.”
“Do you hear what he says?” Charles Gould said in English to Antonia.
“Forgive us our misery!” she exclaimed, hurriedly. “It is your character
that is the inexhaustible treasure which may save us all yet; your
character, Carlos, not your wealth. I entreat you to give this man your
word that you will accept any arrangement my uncle may make with their
chief. One word. He will want no more.”
On the site of the roadside hut there remained nothing but an enormous
heap of embers, throwing afar a darkening red glow, in which Antonia’s
face appeared deeply flushed with excitement. Charles Gould, with only a
short hesitation, pronounced the required pledge. He was like a man who
had ventured on a precipitous path with no room to turn, where the only
chance of safety is to press forward. At that moment he understood
it thoroughly as he looked down at Don Jose stretched out, hardly
breathing, by the side of the erect Antonia, vanquished in a lifelong
struggle with the powers of moral darkness, whose stagnant depths breed
monstrous crimes and monstrous illusions. In a few words the emissary
from Hernandez expressed his complete satisfaction. Stoically Antonia
lowered her veil, resisting the longing to inquire about Decoud’s
escape. But Ignacio leered morosely over his shoulder.
“Take a good look at the mules, mi amo,” he grumbled. “You shall never
see them again!”