Part 3

"Ever since the day when I walked over a high pass of the Cordilleras with nothing but the clothes I stood up in, and an unknown Englishman gave me the railway fare to this city, I have made what return I could to your nation. You, too, have served me, Señor Vandeleur. I pay some small portion of my debt. Money! I have none to give you"; and he uttered the words without a blush, although the half a million pounds sterling received as war indemnity had already been paid into his private account.

"Nor would you take it if I had," Juan resumed. "But I will give you something of equal value."

He led Vandeleur to the window, and waving his hand impressively over the city, he said:

"I will give you the monopoly of green paint in the city of Santa Paula."

I stifled a laugh. Harry Vandeleur got red in the face. For, after all, no man likes to look a greater fool than he naturally is. He had, moreover, a special reason for disappointment.

"I don't suppose that there are twenty bucketsful used in Santa Paula in the year," he exclaimed bitterly.

"Wait, my friend," said Ballester; "there will be."

And a week afterwards the following proclamation appeared upon the walls of the public buildings:

"Owing to the numerous complaints which have been received of the discomfort produced by the glare of a tropical sun, the Government of the day, ever solicitous to further the wishes of its citizens, now orders that every house in Santa Paula, with the exception of the Government buildings, be painted in green paint within two months of the issue of this proclamation, and any resident who fails to obey this enactment shall be liable to a fine of fifty dollars for every day after the two months have elapsed until the order is carried out."

Juan Ballester was, no doubt, a very great man, but I cannot deny that he strained the loyalty of his friends by this proclamation. Grumblings were loud. No one could discover who had complained of the glare of the streets--for the simple reason that no one had complained at all. However, the order was carried out. Daily the streets of Santa Paula grew greener and greener, until the town had quite a restful look, and sank into its background and became a piece with its surroundings. Meanwhile, Harry Vandeleur sat in an office, rubbed his hands, and put up the price of green paint. But, like most men upon whom good fortune has suddenly shone, he was not quite contented. He found his crumpled rose-leaf in the dingy aspect of the Government buildings and the President's house. They alone now reared fronts of dirty plaster and cracked stucco. I remember him leaning out of Juan Ballester's window and looking up and down with a discontented eye.

"Wants a coat of green paint, doesn't it?" he said with a sort of jocular eagerness.

Juan never even winked.

"There ought to be a distinction between this house and all the others," he said gravely. "The President is merely the butler of the citizens. They ought to know at a glance where they can find him."

Harry Vandeleur burst suddenly into a laugh. He was an impulsive youth, a regular bubble of high spirits.

"I am an ungrateful beast, and that's the truth," he said. "You have done a great deal for me, more than you know."

"Have I?" asked Juan Ballester drily.

"Yes," cried Harry Vandeleur, and out the story tumbled.

He was very anxious to marry Olivia Calavera--daughter, by the way, of Santiago Calavera, Ballester's Minister of the Interior--and Olivia Calavera was very anxious to marry him. Olivia was a dream. He, Harry Vandeleur, was a planter in a small way in Trinidad. Olivia and her father came from Trinidad. He had followed her from Trinidad, but Don Santiago, with a father's eye for worldly goods, had been obdurate. It was all very foolish and very young, and rather pleasant to listen to.

"Now, thanks to your Excellency," cried Harry, "I am an eligible suitor. I shall marry the Señorita Olivia."

"Is that so?" said Juan Ballester, with a polite congratulation. But there was just a suspicion of a note in his voice which made me lift my head sharply from the papers over which I was bending. It was impossible, of course--and yet he had drawled the words out in a slow, hard, quiet way which had startled me. I waited for developments, and they were not slow in coming.

"But before you marry," said Juan Ballester, "I want you to do me a service. I want you to go to London and negotiate a loan. I can trust you. Moreover, you will do the work more speedily than another, for you will be anxious to return."

With a friendly smile he took Harry Vandeleur by the arm and led him into his private study. Harry could not refuse. The mission was one of honour, and would heighten his importance in Don Santiago's eyes. He was, besides, under a considerable obligation to Ballester. He embarked accordingly at Las Cuevas, the port of call half an hour away from the city.

"Look after Olivia for me," he said, as we shook hands upon the deck of the steamer.

"I will do the best I can," I said, and I went down the gangway.

Harry Vandeleur travelled off to England. He was out of the way. Meanwhile, I stayed in Maldivia and waited for more developments. But this time they were not so quick in coming.

II

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?"

"Show me how!" said I.

"It is not Harry whom he threatens, but my father"; and she lowered her eyes from mine and was silent.

"My father"; and her answer made my protestations mere vapourings and foolishness.

The danger was real. The British Minister could hold no shield in front of Santiago Calavera, even if there were no guilt upon him for which he could be properly imprisoned. But Olivia's extremity of terror and my knowledge of Santiago warned me that this condition was little likely to exist. I took Olivia's hands. They clung to mine in a desperate appeal for help.

"Come, Señorita," I said gravely. "If I am to help you, I must have the truth. What grounds had Ballester for his threat?"

She raised her head suddenly with a spurt of her old pride.

"My father is a good man," she said, challenging me to deny it. "What he did, he thought right to do. I am not ashamed of him. No!"--and then she would have stopped. But I would not let her. I dared not let her.

"Go on, please!" I insisted, and the pride died out of her face, and she turned in a second to pleading.

"But perhaps he was indiscreet--in what he wrote. He thought, perhaps, too much of his country, too little of those who governed it."

I dropped her hands. I had enough of the truth now. Rumour had always spoken of Santiago Calavera as an intriguer. His daughter was now telling me he was a traitor, too.

"We must find your father," I cried. "He brought you to the ball."

"Yes," said she. "He will be waiting to take me home."

We hurried back to the house and searched the rooms. Calavera was nowhere to be found.

"He cannot have gone!" cried Olivia, wringing her hands. In both of our minds the same question was urgent.

"Has he been taken away?"

I questioned the servants, and the door-keeper replied. A messenger had come for Don Santiago early in the evening. I found the British Minister at Olivia's side when I returned, and a smile of relief upon her face.

"My father made his excuses and went home," she said. "Important business came. He has sent the carriage back."

"May I take you home?" I asked.

"Thank you," said she.

It was getting near to dawn when we drove away. The streets were empty, the houses dark. Olivia kept her face close to the window, and never stirred until we turned the corner into the Calle Madrid. Then she drew back with a low cry of joy. The windows of the great house were ablaze with light. I helped her out of the carriage and rang the bell. We stood in front of the door talking while the coachman drove away to his stables.

"Say nothing to my father," Olivia pleaded. "Promise me, Señor."

I promised readily enough.

"I will come in with you, Señorita," I said. "I must talk with your father"; and I turned impatiently to the door and rang the bell again.

"To-night?" said she.

"Yes," said I. "I promised Harry Vandeleur to look after you."

"Did you?" said she, and though her anxieties were heavy upon her, a tender smile parted her lips.

Still no one came to the door.

"They must have gone to bed," I said, pushing against the panels. To my surprise the door yielded and quietly swung wide. We looked into a hall silent and empty and brightly lit. We were both in a mood to count each new phenomenon a disaster. To both of us there was something eerie in the silent swinging-in of the door, in the emptiness and bright illumination of the hall. We looked at one another in dismay. Then Olivia swept in, and I followed. She walked straight to a door at the back of the hall, hesitated with her hand upon the knob for just the fraction of a second, and flung it open. We went into a room furnished as a study. But the study, too, was empty and brightly lit. There was a green-shaded reading-lamp beside an armchair, as though but now the occupant had sat there and read. Olivia stood in the centre of the room and in a clear and ringing voice she cried:

"Father!"

Her voice echoed along the passages and up the stairs. And no answer came. She turned abruptly, and, moving with a swift step, she opened door after door. Each door opened upon a brightly lit and empty room. She ran a few steps up the stairs and stood poised, holding up in her white gloved hand the glistening skirt of her white frock. One by one she called upon the servants by name, looking upwards. Not a door was opened above our heads. Not a sound of any movement reached our ears.

Olivia ran lightly up the stairs. I heard the swift rustle of her gown as she moved from room to room; and suddenly she was upon the stairs again looking down at me, with her hand like a flake of snow upon the bannister. She gleamed against the background of dark wood, a thing of silver.

"There is no one in the house," she said simply, in a strange and quiet voice. She moved down the stairs and held out her hand to me.

"Good night," she said.

Though her voice never shook, her eyes shone with tears. She was but waiting until I went, to shed them.

"I will come to-morrow," I stammered; "in the morning. I may have news for you," and I bent over her hand and kissed it.

"Good night," she said again, and she stood with her hand upon the latch of the door. I went out. She closed the door behind me. I heard the key turn in the lock, the bolt shoot into its socket. There was a freshness in the air, a paling of the stars above my head. I waited for a while in the street, but no figure appeared at any window, nor was any light put out. I left her alone in that empty and illumined house, its windows blazing on the dawn.

III

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.