Читать книгу The Four Corners of the World - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 15

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I walked back to the President's house and sat comfortably down in my office to think the position over with the help of a pipe. But I had hardly struck the match when the President himself came in. He had changed his dress-coat for a smoking-jacket, and carried a few papers in his hand.

"I am glad to see that you are not tired," he said, "for I have still some work for you to do. I have been looking through some letters, and there are half-a-dozen of so much importance that I should like copies made of them before you go to bed."

He laid them on my writing-table with an intimation that he would return for them in an hour. I rose up with alacrity. I was in no mood for bed, and the mechanical work of copying a few letters appealed to me at the moment. A glance at them, however, startled me into an even greater wakefulness. They were letters, typewritten for the most part, but undoubtedly signed by Santiago Calavera, and all of them dated just before the outbreak of the war. They were addressed to the War Minister of Esmeralda, and they gave details as to where Maldivia was weak, where strong, what roads to the capital were unguarded, and for how many troops provisions could be requisitioned on the way. There was, besides, a memorandum, written, I rejoiced to see, from beginning to end in Santiago's own hand--a deadly document naming some twenty people in Santa Paula who would need attention when Juan Ballester had been overthrown. It was impossible to misunderstand the phrase. Those twenty citizens of Santa Paula were to be shot out of hand against the nearest wall. I was appalled as I copied it out. There was enough treachery here to convict a regiment. No wonder the great house in the Calle Madrid stood empty! No wonder that Calavera---- But while I argued, the picture of the daughter in her shining frock, alone amidst the glitter and the silence, smote upon me as pitiful, and struck the heart out of all my argument.

Juan Ballester was at my elbow the moment after I had finished.

"It is five o'clock," he said, as he gathered the letters and copies together, "and no doubt you will want to be on foot early. You can tell her that I sent her father in a special train last night to the frontier. He is no doubt already with his friends in Esmeralda."

"Then the prisons----" I exclaimed.

"A lover's embroideries--nothing more," said Ballester, with a smile. "But it is interesting to know that you are so thoroughly acquainted with the position of affairs." And he took himself off to bed.

His last remark, however, forced me to consider my own position, and reflection showed it to be delicate. On the one hand I was Ballester's servant, on the other I was Harry Vandeleur's friend. I could not side with both, and I must side with one. If I threw in my lot with Juan Ballester, I became a scoundrel. If I helped Olivia, I might lose my bread and butter. I hope that in any case I should have decided as I did, but there was a good deal of virtue in the "might." For, after all, Juan seemed to recognise that I should be against him and to bear no malice. He had even bidden me relieve Olivia of her fears concerning her father's disappearance. He was a brute, but a brute on rather a grand scale, who took what he wanted but, in spite of Olivia, disdained revenge. I decided to help Olivia, and before nine the next morning I knocked upon her house-door. She opened it herself.

"You have news?" she asked, watching me with anxious eyes, and she stood aside in the shadow of the door while I went in.

"Your father is safe. He was sent to the frontier last night on a special train. He is free."

She had been steel to meet a blow. Now that it did not fall, her strength for a moment failed her. She leaned against a table with her hand to her heart; and her face suddenly told me that she had not slept.

"I will follow him," she said, and she hurried up the stairs. I looked out a train. One left Santa Paula in an hour's time. I went out, leaving the door ajar, and fetched a carriage. Then I shouted up the stairs to Olivia, and she came down in a travelling dress of light grey and a big black hat. Excitement had kindled her. I could no longer have guessed that she had not slept.

"You will see me off?" she said, as she handed me her bag; and she stepped gaily into the carriage.

"I will," I answered, and I jumped in behind her.

The die was cast now.

"Drive down to the station!" I cried.

It was an open carriage. There were people in the street. Juan Ballester would soon learn that he had played the grand gentleman to his discomfiture.

"Yes, I will see you off, Señorita," I said. "But I shall have a bad half-hour with Ballester afterwards."

"Oh!" cried Olivia, with a start. She looked at me as though for the first time my existence had come within her field of vision.

"I am quite aware that you have never given a thought to me," I said sulkily, "but you need hardly make the fact so painfully obvious."

Olivia's hand fell lightly upon mine and pressed.

"My friend!" she said, and her eyes dwelt softly upon mine. Oh, she knew her business as a woman! Then she looked heavenwards.

"A man who helps a woman in trouble----" she began.

"Yes," I interrupted. "He must look up there for his reward. Meanwhile, Señorita, I am envying Harry Vandeleur," and I waved my hand to the green houses. "For he has not only got you, but he has realised his nice little fortune out of green paint." And all Olivia did was to smile divinely; and all she said was "Harry." But there! She said it adorably, and I shook her by the hand.

"I forgive you," she said sweetly. Yes, she had nerve enough for that!

We were driving down to the lower town. I began to consider how much of the events of the early morning I should tell her. Something of them she must know, but it was not easy for the informant. I told her how Juan Ballester had come to me with letters signed by her father and a memorandum in his handwriting.

"The President gave them to me to copy out," I continued; and Olivia broke in, rather quickly:

"What did you do with them?"

I stared at her.

"I copied them out, of course."

Olivia stared now. Her brows puckered in a frown.

"You--didn't--destroy them when you had the chance?" she asked incredulously.

I jumped in my seat.

"Destroy them?" I cried indignantly. "Really, Señorita!"

"You are Harry's friend," she said. "I thought men did little things like that for one another."

"Little things!" I gasped. But I recognised that it would be waste of breath to argue against a morality so crude.

"You shall take Harry's opinion upon that point," said I.

"Or perhaps Harry will take mine," she said softly, with a far-away gaze; and the fly stopped at the station. I bought Olivia's ticket, I placed her bag in the carriage, I stepped aside to let her mount the step; and I knocked against a brilliant creature with a sword at his side--he was merely a railway official. I begged his pardon, but he held his ground.

"Señor, you have, no doubt, his Excellency's permit for the Señorita to travel," he said, holding out his hand.

I was fairly staggered, but I did not misunderstand the man. Ballester had foreseen that Olivia would follow her father, and he meant to keep her in Santa Paula. I fumbled in my pocket to cover my confusion.

"I must have left it behind," I said lamely. "But of course you know me--his Excellency's secretary."

"Who does not?" said the official, bowing politely. "And there is another train in the afternoon, so that the Señorita will, I hope, not be greatly inconvenienced."

We got out of the station somehow. I was mad with myself. I had let myself be misled by the belief that Ballester was indulging in one of his exhibitions as a great gentleman. Whereas he was carefully isolating Olivia so that she might be the more helplessly at his disposition. We stumbled back again into a carriage. I dared not look at Olivia.

"The Calle Madrid!" I called to the driver, and Olivia cried "No!" She turned to me, with a spot of colour burning in each cheek, and her eyes very steady and ominous.

"Will you tell him to drive to the President's?" she said calmly.

The conventions are fairly strict in Maldivia. Young ladies do not as a rule drop in casually upon men in the morning, and certainly not upon Presidents. However, conventions are for the unharassed. We drove to the President's. A startled messenger took in Olivia's name, and she was instantly admitted. I went to my office, but I left the door ajar. For down the passage outside of it Olivia would come when she had done with Juan Ballester. I waited anxiously for a quarter of an hour. Would she succeed with him? I had no great hopes. Anger so well became her. But as the second quarter drew on, my hopes rose; and when I heard the rustle of her dress, I flung open the door. A messenger was escorting her, and she just shook her head at me.

"What did he say?" I asked in English, and she replied in the same language.

"He will not let me go. He was--passionate. Underneath the passion he was hard. He is the cruellest of men."

"I will see you this afternoon," said I; and she passed on. I determined to have it out with Ballester at the earliest possible moment. And within the hour he gave me the opportunity. For he came into the room and said:

"Carlyon, I have not had my letters this morning.

"No, your Excellency," I replied. I admit that my heart began to beat more quickly than usual. "I took the Señorita Olivia to the station, where we were stopped."

"I thought you would," he said, with a grin. "But it is impossible that the Señorita should leave Santa Paula."

"But you can't keep her here!" I cried. "It's--it's----" "Tyrannical" would not do, nor would "autocratic." Neither epithet would sting him. At last I got the right one.

"Your Excellency, it's barbaric!"

Juan Ballester flushed red. I had touched him on the raw. To be a thoroughly civilised person conducting a thoroughly civilised Government over a thoroughly civilised community--that was his wild, ambitious dream, and in rosy moments he would even flatter himself that his dream was realised.

"It's nothing of the kind," he exclaimed. "Don Santiago is a dangerous person. I was moved by chivalry, the most cultured of virtues, to let him go unpunished. But I am bound, from the necessities of the State, to retain some pledge for his decent behaviour."

The words sounded very fine and politic, but they could not obscure the springs of his conduct. He had first got Harry Vandeleur out of the way; then, and not till then, he had pounced upon Don Santiago. His aim had been to isolate Olivia. There was very little chivalry about the matter.

"Besides," he argued, "if there were any barbarism--and there isn't--the Señorita can put an end to it by a word."

"But she won't say it!" I cried triumphantly. "No, she is already pledged. She won't say it."

Juan Ballester looked at me swiftly with a set and lowering face. No doubt I had gone a step too far with him. But I would not have taken back a word at that moment--no, not for the monopoly of green paint. I awaited my instant dismissal, but he suddenly tilted back his chair and grinned at me like a schoolboy.

"I like a good spirit," he said, "whether it be in the Señorita or in my private secretary."

It was apparent that he did not think much of me as an antagonist.

"Well," I grumbled, "Harry Vandeleur will be back in three weeks, and your Excellency must make your account with him."

"Yes, that's true," said Ballester, and--I don't know what it was in him. It was not a gesture, for he did not move; it was not a smile, for his face did not change. But I was immediately and absolutely certain that it was not true at all. Reflection confirmed me. He had taken so much pains to isolate Olivia that he would not have overlooked Harry Vandeleur's return. Somewhere, on some pretext, at Trinidad, or at our own port here, Las Cuevas, Harry Vandeleur would be stopped. I was sure of it. The net was closing tightly round Olivia. This morning the affair had seemed so simple--a mere matter of a six hours' journey in a train. Now it began to look rather grim. I stole a glance at Juan. He was still sitting with his chair tilted back and his hands in his pockets, but he was gazing out of the window, and his face was in repose. I recalled Olivia's phrase: "He is the cruellest of men." Was she right? I wondered. In any case, yes, the affair certainly began to look rather grim.