I was soon back in Montevideo after that. When I bade Demetria good-bye
she appeared reluctant to part with me, retaining my hand in hers for an
unusual time. For the first time in her life, probably, she was about
to be left in the company of entire strangers, and for many days past
we had been much to each other, so that it was only natural she should
cling to me a little at parting. Once more I pressed her hand and
exhorted her to be of good courage, reminding her that in a very few
days all trouble and danger would be over; still, however, she did not
release my hand. This tender reluctance to lose me was affecting and
also flattering, but slightly inopportune, for I was anxious to be in
the saddle and away. Presently she said, glancing down at her rusty
habiliments, “Richard, if I am to remain concealed here till I go to
join you on board, then I must meet your wife in these poor garments.”
“Oh, _that_ is what you are thinking about, Demetria!” I exclaimed.
At once I called in our kind hostess, and when this serious matter was
explained to her she immediately offered to go to Montevideo to procure
the necessary outfit, a thing I had thought nothing about, but which had
evidently been preying on Demetria's mind.
When I at length reached the little suburban retreat of my aunt (by
marriage), Paquíta and I acted for some time like two demented persons,
so overjoyed were we at meeting after our long separation. I had
received no letters from her, and only two or three of the score I
had written had reached their destination, so that we had ten thousand
questions to ask and answers to make. She could never gaze enough at me
or finish admiring my bronzed skin and the respectable moustache I had
grown; while she, poor darling! looked unusually pale, yet withal so
beautiful that I marvelled at myself for having, after possessing her,
considered any other woman even passably good-looking. I gave her a
circumstantial account of my adventures, omitting only a few matters I
was in honour bound not to disclose.
Thus, when I told her the story of my sojourn at the _estancia_ Peralta,
I said nothing to betray Demetria's confidence; nor did I think it
necessary to mention the episode of that wicked little sprite, Cleta;
with the result that she was pleased at the chivalrous conduct I had
displayed throughout the whole of that affair, and was ready to take
Demetria to her heart.
I had not been back twenty-four hours in Montevideo before a letter from
the Lomas de Rocha storekeeper came to justify my caution in having left
Demetria at some distance from the town. The letter informed me that Don
Hilario had quickly guessed that I had carried off his unhappy master's
daughter, and that no doubt was left in his mind when he discovered
that, on the day I left the _estancia_, a person answering to my
description in every particular had purchased a horse and side-saddle
and had ridden off towards the _estancia_ in the evening. My
correspondent warned me that Don Hilario would be in Montevideo even
before his letter, also that he had discovered something about my
connection with the late rebellion, and would be sure to place the
matter in the hands of the government, so as to have me arrested, after
which he would have little difficulty in compelling Demetria to return
to the _estancia_.
For a moment this intelligence dismayed me. Luckily, Paquíta was out of
the house when it came, and fearing that she might return and surprise
me while I was in that troubled state, I rushed out; then, skulking
through back streets and narrow lanes, peering cautiously about in fear
of encountering the minions of the law, I made my escape out of the
town. My only desire just then was to get away into some place of
safety where I would be able to think over the position quietly, and if
possible devise some plan to defeat Don Hilario, who had been a little
too quick for me. Of many schemes that suggested themselves to my mind,
while I sat in the shade of a cactus hedge about a mile from town, I
finally determined, in accordance with my old and well-tried rule, to
adopt the boldest one, which was to go straight back to Montevideo and
claim the protection of my country. The only trouble was that on my
way thither I might be caught, and then Paquíta would be in terrible
distress about me, and perhaps Demetria's escape would be prevented.
While I was occupied with these thoughts I saw a closed carriage pass
by, driven towards the town by a tipsy-looking coachman. Coming out of
my hiding-place, I managed to stop him and offered him two dollars to
drive me to the British Consulate. The carriage was a private one, but
the two dollars tempted the man, so after securing the fare in advance,
he allowed me to get in, and then I closed the windows, leant back on
the cushion, and was driven rapidly and comfortably to the house
of refuge. I introduced myself to the Consul, and told him a story
concocted for the occasion, a judicious mixture of truth and lies, to
the effect that I had been unlawfully and forcibly seized and compelled
to serve in the Blanco army, and that, having escaped from the rebels
and made my way to Montevideo, I was amazed to hear that the government
proposed arresting me. He asked me a few questions, looked at the
passport which he had sent me a few days before, then, laughing
good-humouredly, put on his hat and invited me to accompany him to the
War Office close by. The secretary, Colonel Arocena, he informed me, was
a personal friend of his, and if we could see him it would be all right.
Walking by his side I felt quite safe and bold again, for I was, in a
sense, walking with my hand resting on the superb mane of the British
Lion, whose roar was not to be provoked with impunity. At the War Office
I was introduced by the Consul to his friend, Colonel Arocena, a genial
old gentleman with a bald head and a cigarette between his lips. He
listened with some interest and a smile, slightly incredulous I thought,
to the sad story of the ill-treatment I had been subjected to at the
hands of Santa Coloma's rebellious rascals. When I had finished he
pushed over a sheet of paper on which he had scrawled a few words to me,
with the remark, “Here, my young friend, take this, and you will be
safe in Montevideo. We have heard about your doings in Florida, also in
Rocha, but we do not propose going to war with England on your account.”
At this speech we all laughed; then when I had pocketed the paper, which
bore the sacred seal of the War Office on the margin and requested all
persons to refrain from molesting the bearer in his lawful outgoings and
incomings, we thanked the pleasant old Colonel and retired. I spent
half an hour strolling about with the Consul, then we separated. I had
noticed two men in military uniform at some distance from us when we
were together, and now, returning homewards, I found that they were
following me. By and by they overtook me, and politely intimated their
intention of making me their prisoner. I smiled, and, drawing forth
my protection from the War Office, handed it to them. They looked
surprised, and gave it back, with an apology for having molested me,
then left me to pursue my way in peace.
I had, of course, been very lucky throughout all this adventure; still,
I did not wish to attribute my easy escape entirely to luck, for I had,
I thought, contributed a good deal towards it by my promptness in acting
and in inventing a plausible story on the spur of the moment.
Feeling very much elated, I strolled along the sunny streets, gaily
swinging my cane, when, turning a corner near Doña Isidora's house, I
suddenly came face to face with Don Hilario. This unexpected encounter
threw us both off our guard, he recoiling two or three paces backwardand
turning as pale as the nature of his complexion would allow. I recovered
first from the shock. So far I had been able to baffle him, and knew,
moreover, many things of which he was ignorant; still, he was there in
the town with me and had to be reckoned with, and I quickly resolved to
meet him as a friend, affecting entire ignorance of his object in coming
to Montevideo.
“Don Hilario--you here! Happy the eyes that behold you,” I exclaimed,
seizing and shaking his hand, pretending to be overjoyed at the meeting.
In a moment he recovered his usual self-possessed manner, and when I
asked after Doña Demetria he answered after a moments hesitation that
she was in very good health.
“Come, Don Hilario,” I said, “we are close to my aunt Isidora's house,
where I am staying, and it will give me great pleasure to present you
to my wife, who will be glad to thank you for your kindness to me at the
_estancia_.”
“Your wife, Don Ricardo! Do you tell me that you are married?” he
exclaimed in amazement, thinking probably that I was already the husband
of Demetria.
“What, did I not tell you before!” I said. “Ah, I remember speaking to
Doña Demetria about it. Strange that she has not mentioned it to
you. Yes, I was married before coming to this country--my wife is an
Argentine. Come with me and you shall see a beautiful woman, if that is
an inducement.”
He was without doubt astonished and mystified, but he had recovered his
mask, and was now polite, collected, watchful.
When we entered the house I presented him to Doña Isidora, who happened
to be in the way, and left her to entertain him. I was very glad to
do so, knowing that he would seize the opportunity to try and discover
something from the garrulous old lady, and that he would discover
nothing, since she had not been let into our secrets.
I found Paquíta lying down in her room having a siesta; and while she
arrayed herself at my express desire in her best dress--a black velvet
which set off her matchless beauty better than anything else, I told
her how I wished her to treat Don Hilario. She knew all about him, of
course, and hated him with all her heart, looking on him as a kind of
evil genius from whose castle I had carried off the unhappy Demetria;
but I made her understand that our wisest plan was to treat him
graciously. She readily consented, for Argentine women can be more
charmingly gracious than any other women on the globe, and what people
do well they like to be called on to do.
The subtle caution of our snaky guest did not serve to hide from my
watchful eyes that he was very much surprised when he beheld her. She
placed herself near him and spoke in her sweetest, artless manner of
the pleasure my return had given her, and of the gratitude she had
felt towards him and all the people at the _estancia_ Peralta for the
hospitable treatment I had received there. He was, as I had foreseen,
completely carried away by her exquisite beauty and the charm of
her manner towards him. He was flattered, and exerted himself to be
agreeable, but at the same time he was very much puzzled. The baffled
expression was more apparent on his face every moment, while his
restless glances darted here and there about the room, yet ever
returned, like the doomed moth to the candle, to those lustrous violet
eyes overflowing with hypocritical kindness. Paquíta's acting delighted
me, and I only hoped that he would long suffer from the effect of the
subtle poison she was introducing into his system. When he rose to go I
was sure that Demetria's disappearance was a greater mystery to him
than ever; and as a parting shot I warmly invited him to come and see us
frequently while he remained in the capital, even offering him a bed in
the house; while Paquíta, not to be behindhand, for she had thoroughly
entered into the fun of the thing, entrusted him with a prettily worded,
affectionate message to Demetria, a person whom she already loved and
hoped some day to meet.
Two days after this adventure I heard that Don Hilario had left
Montevideo. That he had discovered nothing I was positive; it was
possible, however, that he had left some person to watch the house, and,
as Paquíta was now anxious to get back to her own country, I determined
to delay our departure no longer.
Going down to the harbour, I found the captain of a small schooner
trading between Montevideo and Buenos Ayres, and, learning that he
intended leaving for the last port in three days' time, I bargained with
him to take us, and got him also to consent to receive Demetria on board
at once. I then sent a message to Mr. Barker, asking him to bring his
guest up to town and put her on board the schooner without coming near
me. Two days later, early in the morning, I heard that she was safe on
board; and, having thus baffled the scoundrel Hilario, on whose ophidian
skull I should have been very pleased to set my heel, and having still
an idle day before me, I went once more to visit the mountain, to take
from its summit my last view of the Purple Land where I had spent so
many eventful days.
When I approached the crest of the great, solitary hill I did not gaze
admiringly on the magnificent view that opened before me, nor did the
wind, blowing fresh from the beloved Atlantic, seem to exhilarate me. My
eyes were cast down and I dragged my feet like one that was weary. Yet
I was not weary, but now I began to remember that on a former occasion
I had on this mountain spoken many vain and foolish things concerning
a people about whose character and history I was then ignorant. I also
remembered with exceeding bitterness that my visit to this land had been
the cause of great and perhaps lasting sorrow to one noble heart.
How often, said I to myself, have I repented of those cruel, scornful
words I addressed to Dolores at our last interview; and now once more
“I come to pluck the berries harsh and crude” of repentance and of
expiation, to humble my insular pride in the dust and unsay all the
unjust things I formerly spoke in my haste.
It is not an exclusively British characteristic to regard the people
of other nationalities with a certain amount of contempt, but with us,
perhaps, the feeling is stronger than with others, or else expressed
with less reserve. Let me now at last rid myself of this error, which
is harmless and perhaps even commendable in those who stay at home,
and also very natural, since it is a part of our unreasonable nature to
distrust and dislike the things that are far removed and unfamiliar. Let
me at last divest myself of these old English spectacles, framed in oak
and with lenses of horn, to bury them for ever in this mountain, which
for half a century and upwards has looked down on the struggles of a
young and feeble people against foreign aggression and domestic foes,
and where a few months ago I sang the praises of British civilisation,
lamenting that it had been planted here and abundantly watered with
blood, only to be plucked up again and cast into the sea. After my
rambles in the interior, where I carried about in me only a fading
remnant of that old time-honoured superstition to prevent the most
perfect sympathy between me and the natives I mixed with, I cannot say
that I am of that opinion now. I cannot believe that if this country had
been conquered and re-colonised by England, and all that is crooked
in it made straight according to our notions, my intercourse with the
people would have had the wild, delightful flavour I have found in it.
And if that distinctive flavour cannot be had along with the material
prosperity resulting from Anglo-Saxon energy, I must breathe the wish
that this land may never know such prosperity. I do not wish to be
murdered; no man does; yet rather than see the ostrich and deer chased
beyond the horizon, the flamingo and black-necked swan slain on the blue
lakes, and the herdsman sent to twang his romantic guitar in Hades as a
preliminary to security of person, I would prefer to go about prepared
at any moment to defend my life against the sudden assaults of the
assassin.
We do not live by bread alone, and British occupation does not give to
the heart all the things for which it craves. Blessings may even become
curses when the gigantic power that bestows them on us scares from our
midst the shy spirits of Beauty and of Poesy. Nor is it solely because
it appeals to the poetic feelings in us that this country endears itself
to my heart. It is the perfect republic: the sense of emancipation
experienced in it by the wanderer from the Old World is indescribably
sweet and novel. Even in our ultra-civilised condition at home we do
periodically escape back to nature; and, breathing the fresh mountain
air and gazing over vast expanses of ocean and land, we find that she is
still very much to us. It is something more than these bodily sensations
we experience when first mingling with our fellow-creatures, where all
men are absolutely free and equal as here. I fancy I hear some wise
person exclaiming, “No, no, no! In name only is your Purple Land a
republic; its constitution is a piece of waste paper, its government an
oligarchy tempered by assassination and revolution.” True; but the knot
of ambitious rulers all striving to pluck each other down have no power
to make the people miserable. Theunwritten constitution, mightier
than the written one, is in the heart of every man to make him still a
republican and free with a freedom it would be hard to match anywhere
else on the globe. The Bedouin himself is not so free, since he accords
an almost superstitious reverence and implicit obedience to his sheikh.
Here the lord of many leagues of land and of herds unnumbered sits down
to talk with the hired shepherd, a poor, bare-footed fellow in his
smoky _rancho_, and no class or caste difference divides them, no
consciousness of their widely different positions chills the warm
current of sympathy between two human hearts. How refreshing it is to
meet with this perfect freedom of intercourse, tempered only by
that innate courtesy and native grace of manner peculiar to Spanish
Americans! What a change to a person coming from lands with higher and
lower classes, each with its innumerable hateful subdivisions--to one
who aspires not to mingle with the class above him, yet who shudders at
the slouching carriage and abject demeanour of the class beneath him! If
this absolute equality is inconsistent with perfect political order, I
for one should grieve to see such order established. Moreover, it is by
no means true that the communities which oftenest startle us with crimes
of disorder and violence are morally worse than others. A community in
which there are not many crimes cannot be morally healthy. There
were practically _no_ crimes in Peru under the Inca dynasty; it was a
marvellous thing for a person to commit an offence in that empire. And
the reason for this most unnatural state of things was this--the Inca
system of government was founded on that most iniquitous and disastrous
doctrine that the individual bears the same relation to the State as a
child to its parents, that its life from the cradle to the grave must
be regulated for it by a power it is taught to regard as omniscient--a
power practically omnipresent and almighty. In such a state there could
be no individual will, no healthy play of passions, and consequently no
crime. What wonder that a system so unspeakably repugnant to a being who
feels that his will is a divinity working within him fell to pieces at
the first touch of foreign invasion, or that it left no vestige of its
pernicious existence on the continent it had ruled! For the whole state
was, so to speak, putrid even before dissolution, and when it fell it
mingled with the dust and was forgotten. Poland, before its conquest by
Russia, a country ill-governed and disorderly as the Banda Orientál, did
not mingle with dust like that when it fell--the implacable despotism
of the Czar was unable to crush its fierce spirit; its _Will_ still
survived to gild dreary oppression with hallowed dreams, to make it
clutch with a fearful joy the dagger concealed in its bosom. But I had
no need to go away from this Green Continent to illustrate the truth of
what I have said. People who talk and write about the disorderly South
American republics are fond of pointing to Brazil, that great, peaceful,
progressive empire, as setting an example to be followed. An orderly
country, yes, and the people in it steeped to their lips in every
abominable vice! Compared with these emasculated children of the
equator, the Orientals are Nature's noblemen.
I can very well imagine some over-righteous person saying, “Alas, poor
deluded soul, how little importance can we attach to your specious
apologies of a people's lawlessness, when your own personal narrative
shows that the moral atmosphere you have been breathing has quite
corrupted you! Go back over your own record, and you will find that you
have, according to _our_ notions, offended in various ways and on divers
occasions, and that you are even without the grace to repent of all the
evil things you have thought, said, and done.”
I have not read many books of philosophy, because when I tried to be a
philosopher “happiness was always breaking in,” as someone says; also
because I have loved to study men rather than books; but in the little I
have read there occurs a passage I remember well, and this I shall quote
as my answer to anyone who may call me an immoral person because my
passions have not always remained in a quiescent state, like hounds--to
quote the simile of a South American poet--slumbering at the feet of
the huntsman resting against a rock at noon. “We should regard the
perturbations of the mind,” says Spinoza, “not in the light of vices
of human nature, but as properties just as pertinent to it as are heat,
storms, thunder, and the like, to the nature of the atmosphere, which
phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have fixed causes
by means of which we endeavour to understand their nature, and the
mind has just as much pleasure in seeing them aright as in knowing
such things as flatter the senses.” Let me have the phenomena which are
inconvenient as well as the things which flatter the senses, and the
chances are that my life will be a healthier and happier one than
that of the person who spends his time on a cloud blushing at Nature's
naughtiness.
It is often said that an ideal state--a Utopia where there is no folly,
crime, or sorrow--has a singular fascination for the mind. Now, when I
meet with a falsehood, I care not who the great persons who proclaim it
may be, I do not try to like it or believe it or mimic the fashionable
prattle of the world about it. I hate all dreams of perpetual peace,
all wonderful cities of the sun, where people consume their joyful,
monotonous years in mystic contemplations, or find their delight, like
Buddhist monks, in gazing on the ashes of dead generations of devotees.
The state is one unnatural, unspeakably repugnant: the dreamless sleep
of the grave is more tolerable to the active, healthy mind than such an
existence. If Signor Gaudentio di Lucca, still keeping himself alive
by means of his marvellous knowledge of the secrets of Nature, were
to appear before me now on this mountain to inform me that the sacred
community he resided with in Central Africa was no mere dream, and
should offer to conduct me to it, I should decline to go with him. I
should prefer to remain in the Banda Orientál, even though by so doing I
should grow at last to be as bad as any person in it, and ready to “wade
through slaughter” to the Presidential Chair. For even in my own country
of England, which is not so perfect as old Peru or the Pophar's country
in Central Africa, I have been long divided from Nature, and now in this
Oriental country, whose political misdeeds are a scandal alike to pure
England and impure Brazil, I have been reunited to her. For this reason
I love her with all her faults. Here, like Santa Coloma, I will kneel
down and kiss this stone, as an infant might kiss the breast that feeds
it; here, fearless of dirt, like John Carrickfergus, I will thrust my
hands into the loose brown soil to clasp the hands, as it were, of dear
mother Nature after our long separation.
Farewell, beautiful land of sunshine and storm, of virtue and of crime;
may the invaders of the future fare on your soil like those of the
past and leave you in the end to your own devices; may the chivalrous
instinct of Santa Coloma, the passion of Dolores, the loving-kindness
of Candelaria still live in your children to brighten their lives with
romance and beauty; may the blight of our superior civilisation never
fall on your wild flowers, or the yoke of our progress be laid on your
herdsman--careless, graceful, music-loving as the birds--to make him
like the sullen, abject peasant of the Old World!