第78章

For if ever man spoke well, it would be from a personal feeling, denouncing an enemy, defending himself, or pleading for what really may be dearer than life. My dear girl, I absolutely thundered at them. It seemed as if my voice would burst the walls asunder, and when I stopped I saw all their scared eyes looking at me dubiously. And that was all the effect I had produced! Only Don Jose's head had sunk lower and lower on his breast.

I bent my ear to his withered lips, and made out his whisper, something like, `In God's name, then, Martin, my son!' I don't know exactly. There was the name of God in it, I am certain. It seems to me I have caught his last breath -- the breath of his departing soul on his lips.

He lives yet, it is true. I have seen him since; but it was only a senile body, lying on its back, covered to the chin, with open eyes, and so still that you might have said it was breathing no longer. I left him thus, with Antonia kneeling by the side of the bed, just before I came to this Italian's posada , where the ubiquitous death is also waiting. But I know that Don Jose has really died there, in the Casa Gould, with that whisper urging me to attempt what no doubt his soul, wrapped up in the sanctity of diplomatic treaties and solemn declarations, must have abhorred. I had exclaimed very loud, `There is never any God in a country where men will not help themselves.'

Meanwhile, Don Juste had begun a pondered oration whose solemn effect was spoiled by the ridiculous disaster to his beard. I did not wait to make it out. He seemed to argue that Montero's (he called him The General)intentions were probably not evil, though, he went on, `that distinguished man' (only a week ago we used to call him a gran' bestia ) `was perhaps mistaken as to the true means'. As you may imagine, I didn't stay to hear the rest. I know the intentions of Montero's brother, Pedrito, the guerrillero , whom I exposed in Paris, some years ago, in a cafe frequented by South American students, where he tried to pass himself off for a Secretary of Legation. He used to come in and talk for hours, twisting his felt hat in his hairy paws, and his ambition seemed to become a sort of Duc de Morny to a sort of Napoleon. Already, then, he used to talk of his brother in inflated terms. He seemed fairly safe from being found out, because the students, all of the Blanco families, did not, as you may imagine, frequent the Legation. It was only Decoud, a man without faith and principles, as they used to say, that went in there sometimes for the sake of the fun, as it were to an assembly of trained monkeys. I know his intentions. Ihave seen him change the plates at table. Whoever is allowed to live on in terror, I must die the death.

No, I didn't stay to the end to hear Don Juste Lopez trying to persuade himself in a grave oration of the clemency and justice, and honesty, and purity of the brothers Montero. I went out abruptly to seek Antonia. Isaw her in the gallery. As I opened the door, she extended to me her clasped hands.

`What are they doing in there?' she asked.

`Talking,' I said, with my eyes looking into hers.

`Yes, yes, but--'

`Empty speeches,' I interrupted her. `Hiding their fears behind imbecile hopes. They are all great Parliamentarians there -- on the English model, as you know.' I was so furious that I could hardly speak. She made a gesture of despair.

Through the door I held a little ajar behind me, we heard Don Juste's measured mouthing monotone go on from phrase to phrase, like a sort of awful and solemn madness.

`After all, the Democratic aspirations have, perhaps, their legitimacy.

The ways of human progress are inscrutable, and if the fate of the country is in the hand of Montero, we ought--'

I crashed the door to on that; it was enough; it was too much. There was never a beautiful face expressing more horror and despair than the face of Antonia. I couldn't bear it; I seized her wrists.

`Have they killed my father in there?' she asked.

Her eyes blazed with indignation, but as I looked on, fascinated, the light in them went out.

`It is a surrender,' I said. And I remember I was shaking her wrists I held apart in my hands. `But it's more than talk. Your father told me to go on in God's name.'

My dear girl, there is that in Antonia which would make me believe in the feasibility of anything. One look at her face is enough to set my brain on fire. And yet I love her as any other man would -- with the heart, and with that alone. She is more to me than his Church to Father Corbelan (the Grand Vicar disappeared last night from the town; perhaps gone to join the band of Hernandez). She is more to me than his precious mine to that sentimental Englishman. I won't speak of his wife. She may have been sentimental once. The San Tome mine stands now between those two people. `Your father himself, Antonia,' I repeated; `your father, do you understand? has told me to go on.'

She averted her face, and in a pained voice--`He has?' she cried. `Then, indeed, I fear he will never speak again.'

She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to cry in her handkerchief.

I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather see her miserable than not see her at all, never any more; for whether I escaped or stayed to die, there was for us no coming together, no future. And that being so, I had no pity to waste upon the passing moments of her sorrow. I sent her off in tears to fetch Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their sentiment was necessary to the very life of my plan; the sentimentalism of the people that will never do anything for the sake of their passionate desire, unless it comes to them clothed in the fair robes of an idea.

Late at night we formed a small junta of four -- the two women, Don Carlos, and myself -- in Mrs Gould's blue-and-white boudoir.