Читать книгу The Four Corners of the World - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 13

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Ballester, like greater and lesser men, had his inconsistencies. Although he paid his private secretary with "opportunities" and bribed his friends with monopolies; although he had shamelessly rigged the elections, and paid as much of the country's finances as he dared into his private banking account; and although there was that little affair of the Opera House, he was genuinely and sincerely determined to give to the Republic a cast-iron Constitution. He had an overpowering faith in law and order--for other people.

We hammered out the Constitution day and night for another fortnight, and then Ballester gabbled it over to a Council of his Ministers. Not one of them could make head or tail of what he was reading, with the exception of Santiago Calavera, a foxy-faced old rascal with a white moustache, who sat with a hand curved about his ear and listened to every word. I had always wondered why Ballester had given him office at all. At one point he interrupted in a smooth, smiling voice:

"But, your Excellency, that is not legal."

"Legal or not legal," said the President with a snap, "it is going through, Señor Santiago"; and the Constitution was duly passed by a unanimous vote, and became the law of Maldivia.

That event took place a couple of months after Harry Vandeleur had sailed for England. I stretched my arms and looked about for relaxation. The Constitution was passed at six o'clock in the evening. There was to be a ball that night at the house of the British Minister. I made up my mind to go. For a certainty I should find Olivia there; and I was seized with remorse. For, in spite of my promise to Harry Vandeleur, I had hardly set eyes upon her during the last two months.

I saw her at ten o'clock. She was dancing--a thing she loved. She was dressed in a white frock of satin and lace, with a single rope of pearls about her throat, and she looked divinely happy. She was a girl of nineteen years, fairly tall, with black hair, a beautiful white face, and big, dark eyes which shone with kindness. She had the hand and foot of her race, and her dancing was rather a liquid movement of her whole supple body than a matter of her limbs. I watched her for a few moments from a corner. She had brains as well as beauty, and though she spoke with a pleading graciousness, at the back of it one was aware of a pride which would crack the moon. She worked, too, as few girls of her station work in the Republics of South America. For her father, from what I then thought to be no better than parsimony, used her as his secretary. As she swung by my corner for the second time she saw me and stopped.

"Señor Carlyon, it is two months since I have seen you," she said reproachfully.

"Señorita, it is only four hours since our brand new Constitution was passed into law, and already I am looking for you."

She shook her head.

"You have neglected me."

"I regret to notice," said I, "that my neglect has in no way impaired your health."

Olivia laughed. She had a taking laugh, and the blood mounted very prettily into her cheeks.

"I could hardly be ill," she said. "I had a letter to-day."

"Lucky man to write you letters," said I. "Let me read it, Señorita."

She drew back swiftly and her hand went to her bosom.

"Oh, it is there!" said I.

Again she laughed, but this time with a certain shyness, and the colour deepened on her cheeks.

"He sails to-day," said she.

"Then I have still three weeks," said I lightly. "Will you dance with me for the rest of the evening?"

"Certainly not," she answered with decision. "But after the fifth dance from now, you will find me, Señor Carlyon, here"; and turning again to her partner, she was caught up into the whirl of dancers.

After the fifth dance I returned to that corner of the ballroom. I found Olivia waiting. But it was an Olivia whom I did not know. The sparkle and the freshness had gone out of her; fear and not kindness shone in her eyes.

Her face lit up for a moment when she saw me, and she stepped eagerly forward.

"Quick!" she said. "Somewhere where we shall be alone!"

Her hand trembled upon my arm. She walked quickly from the room, smiling as she went. She led me along a corridor into the garden of the house, a place of palms and white magnolias on the very edge of the upper town. She went without a word to the railings at the end of the garden, whence one looks straight down upon the lights of the lower town along the river bank. Then she turned. A beam of light from the windows shone upon her face. The smile had gone from it. Her lips shook.

"What has happened?" I asked.

She spoke in jerks.

"He came to me to-night. … He danced with me. … "

"Who?" I asked.

"Juan Ballester," said she.

I had half expected the name.

"He spoke of himself," she resumed. "Sometimes it is not easy to tell whether he is acting or whether he is serious. It was easy to-night. He was serious."

"What did he say?"

"That up till to-night all had been work with him. … That to-night had set the crown upon his work. … That now for the first time he could let other hopes, other thoughts, have play. … "

"Yes, I see," I replied slowly. "Having done his work, he wants his prize. He would."

Ballester had toiled untiringly for thirteen years in both open and devious ways, and, as the consequence of his toil, he had lifted his Republic into an importance which it had never possessed before. He had succeeded because what he wanted, he wanted very much. It certainly looked as if there were considerable trouble in front of Olivia and Harry Vandeleur--especially Harry Vandeleur.

"So he wants you to marry him," I said; and Olivia gave me one swift look and turned her head away.

"No," she answered in a whisper. "He wants his revenge, too."

"Revenge?" I exclaimed.

Olivia nodded her head.

"He told me that I must go up to Benandalla"; and the remark took my breath away. Benandalla was the name of a farm which Ballester owned, up in the hills two hours away from Santa Paula; and the less said about it the better. Ballester was accustomed to retreat thither after any spell of unusually arduous work; and the great feastings which went on, the babel of laughter, the noise of music and castanets and the bright lights blazing upon the quiet night till dawn had made the farm notorious. Even at this moment, I knew, it was not nearly uninhabited.

"At Benandalla … you?" I cried; and, indeed, it seemed to me that the mere presence of Olivia must have brought discomfort into those coarse orgies, so set apart was she by her distinction. "And he tells you to go," I continued, "as if you were his maidservant!"

Olivia clenched her small hands together and leaned upon the railings. Her eyes travelled along the river below and sought a brightness in the distant sky--the loom of the lights of Las Cuevas. For a little while, she was strengthened by thoughts of escape, and then once more she drooped.

"I am frightened," she said, and coming from her, the whispered and childish cry filled me with consternation. It was her manner and what she left unsaid rather than her words, which alarmed me. Where I should have expected pride and a flame of high anger, I found sheer terror, and the reason of that terror she had not yet given me.

"He spoke of Harry," she resumed. "He said that Harry must not interfere. … He used threats."

Yes, I thought, Juan Ballester would do that. It was not the usual way of conducting a courtship; but Juan Ballester's way was not the usual way of governing a country.

"What kind of threats?"

"Prisons," she answered with a break in her voice.

"What?" I exclaimed.

"Yes," she said. "Prisons--especially in the Northern Republics of South America. … He explained that, though you have more liberty here than anywhere else so long as you are free, you are more completely--destroyed--here than anywhere else if you once get into prison." From her hesitation I could guess that "destroyed" was a milder word than Juan Ballester had used.

"He described them to me," she went on. "Hovels where you sleep in the mud at night, and whence you are leased out by day to work in the fields without a hat--until, in a month or so, the sun puts an end to your misery."

I knew there was truth in that description. But it was not possible that Ballester could put his threat into force. It was anger now, not consternation, which filled me.

"Señorita, reflect!" I cried. "In whose garden are you standing now? The British Minister's--and Harry Vandeleur is an Englishman. It was no more than a brutal piece of bullying by Ballester. See! I am his secretary"--and she suddenly turned round towards me with a gleam in her eyes.

"Yes," she interrupted. "You are his secretary and Harry's friend. Will you help us, I wonder?"