第60章

he continued, his tone passing into light banter, `that Montero, should he be successful, would get even with me in the only way such a brute can get even with a man of intelligence who condescends to call him a gran'

bestia three times a week. It's a sort of intellectual death; but there is the other one in the background for a journalist of my ability.'

`If he is successful!' said Antonia, thoughtfully.

`You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread,' Decoud replied, with a broad smile. `And the other Montero, the "my trusted brother" of the proclamations, the guerrillero --haven't I written that he was taking the guests' overcoats and changing plates in Paris at our Legation in the intervals of spying on our refugees there, in the time of Rojas?

He will wash out that sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you look annoyed? This is simply a bit of the biography of one of our great men.

What do you think he will do to me? There is a certain convent wall round the corner of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You know?

Opposite the door with the inscription, "Intrada de la Sombra". Appropriate, perhaps! That's where the uncle of our host gave up his Anglo-South-American soul. And, note, he might have run away. A man who has fought with weapons may run away. You might have let me go with Barrios if you had cared for me. I would have carried one of those rifles, in which Don Jose believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in the ranks of poor peons and indios , that know nothing either of reason or politics. The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth would have been safer than that for which you made me stay here. When you make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your time in inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die.'

His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she stood motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down from her interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then:

`I shall go to the wall,' he said, with a sort of jocular desperation.

Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her head remained still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avellanos, whose chipped pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole figure her lips alone moved, forming the words:

`Martin, you will make me cry.'

He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a sort of awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still stiffened about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a sentence is in the personality which utters it, for nothing new can be said by man or woman; and those were the last words, it seemed to him, that could ever have been spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up with her so completely in all their intercourse of small encounters; but even before she had time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with a rigid grace, he had begun to plead:

`My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is transported with joy. I won't say anything of my mother! Our mothers were like sisters.

There is the mail-boat for the south next week--let us go. That Moraga is a fool! A man like Montero is bribed. It's the practice of the country.

It's tradition--it's politics. Read Fifty Years of Misrule .'

`Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes--'

`I have the greatest tenderness for your father,' he began, hurriedly.

`But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has miserably mismanaged this business.

Perhaps your father did, too; I don't know. Montero was bribable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of this famous loan for national development.

Why didn't the stupid Sta Marta people give him a mission to Europe, or something? He would have taken five years' salary in advance, and gone on loafing in Paris, this stupid, ferocious indio !'

`The man,' she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before this outburst, `was intoxicated with vanity. We had all the information, not from Moraga only; from others, too. There was his brother intriguing, too.'

`Oh, yes!' he said. `Of course you know. You know everything. You read all the correspondence, you write all the papers -- all those State papers that are inspired here, in this room, in blind deference to a theory of political purity. Hadn't you Charles Gould before your eyes? "Rey de Sulaco!"He and his mine are the practical demonstration of what could have been done. Do you think he succeeded by his fidelity to a theory of virtue?

And all those railway people, with their honest work! Of course, their work is honest! But what if you cannot work honestly till the thieves are satisfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told this Sir John what's-his-name that Montero had to be bought off -- he and all his Negro liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve? He ought to have been bought off with his own stupid weight of gold -- his weight of gold, I tell you, boots, sabre, spurs, cocked hat, and all.'

She shook her head slightly. `It was impossible,' she murmured.

`He wanted the whole lot? What?'