# Green Paint

Extracted from Windsor magazine, v. 31 1916, pp. 23-41. Accompanying illustrations by Alec Ball omitted.
GREEN PAINT.
By A. E. W. MASON.
I CAME up by the lift from the lower town, Harry Vandeleur strolled from his more respectable lodging in the upper quarter, and we met unexpectedly in Government Square. It was ten o'clock in the morning, and the Square, a floor of white within a ragged border of trees, glared blindingly under the tropical sun. On each side of the President's door a diminutive soldier rattled a rifle from time to time.
"What? Has he sent for you too?" said Harry, pointing to the President's house.
"Juan Pablo. Yes," said I, and Harry Vandeleur stopped with a sudden suspicion on his face.
"What does he want with us?" he asked.
"We volunteered in the war," said I. "We were both useful to him."
Harry Vandeleur shook his head.
"He is at the top of his power. He has won his three-weeks war. The Army has made him President for the second time of the Republic of Maldivia. He has so skilfully organised his elections that he has a Parliament, not merely without an Opposition, but without a single man of any note in it except Don Felipe Halvera. It is not from such that humble people like us can expect gratitude."
Juan Pablo was, in fact, a very remarkable person. I came to have a considerable knowledge of him afterwards, and I noticed that very few people who had dealings with him ever forgot him. There was the affair of the Opera House, for instance, and a hundred other cases. Who he really was I should think no one knew. He used to say that he was born in Mexico City, and when he wished to get the better of anyone with a sentimental turn, he would speak of his old mother in a broken voice. But since he never wrote to his old mother, nor she to him, I doubt very much whether she existed. The only certain fact known about him was that some thirteen years before, when he was crossing on foot a high pass of the Cordilleras without, a dollar in his pocket, he met a stranger—but no! I have heard him attribute so many different nationalities to that stranger that I wouldn't kiss the Bible even on that story. Probably he "was" a Mexican and of a good stock. Certainly no Indian blood made a flaw in him. For though his hair was black and a pencil-line of black moustache decorated his lip, his skin was fair like any Englishman's. He was thirty-eight years old, five feet eleven in height, strongly but not thickly built, and he had a pleasant, good-humoured face which attracted and deceived by its look of frankness. For the rest of him the story must speak.
He received us in a great room on the first floor overlooking the Square; and at once he advanced and laid a hand impressively upon my shoulder. He looked into my face silently. Then he said—
"Carlyon, I want you."
I did not believe him for a moment. None the less my hopes rose. I was living on credit in a very inferior hotel. "I had thought my work was done," he continued. "I had hoped to retire, like Cincinnatus, to my plough," and he gazed sentimentally out of the window across the city to the wooded hills of San Paulo. "But since my country calls me, I must have someone about me whom I can trust." He broke off to ask: "I suppose your police are no longer searching for you?"
"They never were, your Excellency," I protested hotly.
"Well, perhaps not," he said indulgently.
"No doubt the natural attractions of Maldivia brought you here. You did me some service in the war. I am not ungrateful. I appoint you my private secretary."
"Your Excellency!" I cried.
He shook hands with me and added carelessly—
"There is no salary attached to the post, but there are—opportunities."
And there were. That is why I now live in a neat little villa at Sorrento.
Juan Pablo turned to Harry Vandeleur and took him by the arm. He looked from one to the other of us.
"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, Signer 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 Pablo 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 San Paulo."
I stilled 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 San Paulo in the year," he exclaimed bitterly.
"Wait, my friend," said Juan Pablo; "there will be."
He was right. For 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 San Paulo, 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 Pablo, to my thinking, was 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 San Paulo 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 Pablo'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 Pablo 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 Pablo drily.
"Yes," cried Harry Vandeleur, and out the story tumbled.
He was very anxious to marry Olivia Halvera—daughter, by the way, of Felipe Halvera, Pablo's Minister of the Interior—and Olivia Halvera 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 Felipe, 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 Signorita Olivia."
"Is that so?" said Juan Pablo, 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 Pablo, "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 Felipe's eyes. He was, besides, under a considerable obligation to Juan Pablo. He embarked accordingly at La Guya, 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 develop- ments. But this time they were not so quick in coming.
II.
There was a queer incongruity in Juan Pablo. Like most great men, he was inexplicable. Here is an instance. 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 could 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 Juan Pablo 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 Don Felipe Halvera, 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 Juan Pablo 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 vith a snap, " it is going " to be, Signor Halvera"; 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 Halvera 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 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.
"Signor Carlyon, it is two months since I have seen you," she said reproachfully.
"Signorita, 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, Signorita, 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, Signorita."
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. "Signorita, 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, Signor 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, Signorita?" I asked.
She spoke in jerks.
"He came to me to-night. … He danced with me …"
"Who? " I asked.
"Juan Pablo," said she.
I had half expected the name. None the less it startled me.
"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 …"
Olivia was giving me a new view of Juan Pablo. After all, I reflected, he had worked—worked without ceasing for thirteen years; and as a result he had raised what he called his "one-eyed Republic" into an importance which it had never possessed before. The man shone out before my mind in a very sympathetic light and drew my thoughts. Olivia turned them again to herself.
"He asked me to marry him," she said. "Yes," I said slowly. "Having done his work, he wants his prize. He would. And you—what did you answer?"
"I answered 'No,' of course. But he would not take my answer." A spasm of fear shook her. She clenched her small hands tightly together, and turning her back upon me, she leaned upon the railings. Her eyes travelled along the river below and sought a distant glare in the sky—the glare of the lights of La Guya. For a little while her eyes remained fixed upon that glare, as though it comforted her with a way of escape. But then she buried her face in her hands and said in so low a voice that I hardly heard the words—
"I am frightened. … I am very frightened!"
Coming from her, the low and childish cry filled me with consternation. It was not so much what she said as what she left unsaid which alarmed me. For there was nothing in her story so far to justify the extremity of her terror. A rivalry between Juan Pablo and Harry Vandeleur would be a troublesome business for her, no doubt. But since she loved Harry Vandeleur, it could be no more than troublesome; and, after all, troublesome things are fairly common in the lives of all of us. No, there was some greater reason for her fears than she had yet given to me, and I waited in a keen suspense for it.
"He spoke of Harry," she resumed. "He said that Harry must not interfere. … He used threats."
Yes, I thought, Juan Pablo would do that. It was not the usual way of conducting a courtship; but Juan Pablo's way was not the usual way of governing a country.
"What kind of threats?"
"He spoke of prisons," she answered with a break in her voice.
"Of what?" I exclaimed.
"Yes," she said. "Of 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—ruined—here than anywhere else if you once get into prison." From her hesitation I could guess that "ruined" was a milder word than Juan Pablo 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 week or so, the sun puts an end to your misery."
I knew there was truth in that description. But it was not possible that Juan Pablo could put his threat into force. It was anger now, not consternation, which filled me.
"Signorita, reflect!" I cried. "In whose garden are you standing now? The English Minister's—and Harry Vandeleur is an Englishman. It was no more than a brutal piece of bullying by Juan Pablo. See! I am his secretary"—and she suddenly turned round towards me with a gleam in her eyes.
"Yes," she mterrupted. "You are his secretary and Harry's friend. Will you help us, I wonder?"
"How?" said I.
"It is not Harry whom he threatens, but my father"; and she lowered her eyes from mine and was silent.
I drew in a breath sharply. I did, indeed, begin to i realise that there was reason in Olivia's fears. I stepped forward and took her hands. They clung lo mine in a desperate appeal for help.
"Come, Signorita," I said gravely. "If I am to help you, I must have the truth. What grounds had Juan Pablo 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.
"Come, Signorita!" 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 Don Felipe as an intriguer. Don Felipe's daughter was 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. Don Felipe 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 Felipe 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, Signor."
I promised readily enough. I knew very well Don Felipe would be insistent that she should marry Juan Pablo.
"I will come in with you, Signorita," 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 Don Felipe, 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 provisions could be requisitioned on the way. There was, besides, a memorandum, written, I rejoiced to see, from beginning to end in Don Felipe's own hand—a deadly document naming some twenty people in San Paulo who would need attention when Juan Pablo had been overthrown. It was impossible to misunderstand the phrase. Those twenty citizens of San Paulo 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 Don Felipe—— 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 Pablo 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 Juan Pablo, 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 Juan Pablo'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 Pablo, 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 Pablo 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 fathers disappearance. He was a brute, but a brute on rather a grand scale, who took what he wanted but disdained revenge. I decided to help Olivia, and before nine the next morning I knocked upon the door. She opened it herself. "You have news? " she said, watching me with anxious eyes, and she stood aside in the shadow of the door while I went in.
"Don Felipe 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 San Paulo in an hour's time. I went out, leaving the door ajar, and fetched a cab. 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 Pablo would soon learn that he had played the grand gentleman to his discomfiture.
"Yes, I will see you off, Signorita," I said. "But I shall have a bad half-hour with Juan Pablo 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, Signorita, 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 Pablo had come to me with letters signed by Don Felipe 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, Signorita!"
"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.
"Signor, you have, no doubt, his Excellency's permit for the Signorita to travel," he said, holding out his hand.
I was fairly staggered, but I did not misunderstand the man. Juan Pablo had foreseen that Olivia would follow her father, and he meant to keep her in San Paulo. 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 Signorita will, I hope, not be greatly inconvenienced."
We got out of the station somehow. I was mad with myself. I ought to have known that if Juan Pablo played the grand gentleman, he would have already taken care that he was not going to lose anything by it.
We stumbled back again into a fly. 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 Pablo. 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 1 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 asked me again to marry him, and again I refused. He was gentle, but 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 Juan Pablo 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 Signorita Halvera to the station, where we were stopped."
"I thought you would," he said, with a grin. "But it is impossible that the Signorita should leave San Paulo."
"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 Pablo 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 Felipe 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 Felipe. 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 Signorita 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 Pablo 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 Signorita 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 Juan Pablo, 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, La Guya, 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 Pablo. 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.
IV.
I was not free until five that afternoon. But I was in the Calle Madrid before the quarter after five had struck. Again Olivia herself admitted me. She led the way to her father's study at the back of the house. Though I had hurried to the holise, I followed her slowly into the study.
"You are still alone?" I asked.
"An old woman—we once befriended her—will come in secretly for an hour in the morning."
"Secretly? "
"She dare not do otherwise."
I was silent. There was a refinement about Juan Pablo's persecution which was simply devihsh. He would not molest her, he left her apparently free. But he kept her in a great, empty house in the middle of the town, without servants, without power to leave, without—oh, much more than I had any idea of at the time. But, even so, I noticed that she had changed since the morning. She had come out from her interview with Juan Pablo holding her head high. Now she stood in front of me twisting her hands, a creature of fear.
"You must escape," I said.
Her great eyes looked anxiously at me from a wan face.
"I must," she said. "Yes, I must." Then came a pause, and with a break in her voice she continued. "He warned me not to try. He said that it would not be pleasant for me if I were caught trying."
"A mere threat," I said contemptuously, "like the prisons." But I did not believe my own words, and my blood ran cold. It would be easy to implicate Olivia in the treachery of her father. And the police in Maldivia are not very gentle in their handling of their prisoners, women or men. Still, that risk must be run.
"The Ariadne calls at La Guya in a fortnight," I said. "We must smuggle you out on her."
Olivia stared at me in consternation. She stood like one transfixed.
"A fortnight!" she said. Then she sat down m a chair clasping her hands together. "A fortnight!" she whispered to herself, and as I listened to her, and watched her eyes glancing this way and that like an animal trapped in a cage, it was borne in on me that since this morning some new thing had happened to frighten the very soul of her. I begged her to tell it me.
"No," she said, rising to her feet. "No doubt I can wait for a fortnight."
"That's right, Signorita," I said. "I will arrange a plan. Meanwhile, where can I hear from you and you from me? It will not do for us to meet too often. Have you friends who will be staunch?"
"I wonder," she said slowly. "Enrique Ximenes and his wife, perhaps."
"We will not strain their friendship very much. But we can meet at their house. You can leave a letter for me there, perhaps, and I one for you."
Enrique Ximenes was a Spanish merchant and a gentleman. So far, I felt sure, we could trust him. There was one other man in San Paulo on whom I could rely, the agent of the steamship company to which the Ariadne belonged. I rang him up on the telephone that afternoon and arranged a meeting after dark in a back room of that very inferior hotel in the lower town where for some weeks I had lived upon credit. The agent, a solid man with business interests of his own in Maldivia, listened to my story without a word of interruption. Then he said—
"There are four things I can do for you, and no more. In the first place, I can receive here the Signorita's luggage in small parcels and put it together for her. In the second, I can guarantee that the Ariadne shall not put into La Guya until dusk, and shall leave the same night. In the third, I will have every bale of cargo already loaded into her before the passenger train comes alongside from San Paulo. And in the fourth, I will arrange that the Ariadne shall put to sea the moment the last of her passengers has crossed the gangway. The rest you must do for yourself."
"Thank you," said I. "That's a great deal."
But the confidence was all in my voice and none of it at all in my heart. I went back to Juan Pablo and tried persuasion with him.
"I have seen the Signorita this afternoon," I said to him.
"I know," said he calmly.
I had personally no longer any fear that he might dismiss me. I would, I think, have thrown up my job myself, but that I seemed to have a better chance of helping the girl by staying on.
"You will never win her," I continued, "your Excellency, by your way of wooing."
"Oh, and why not?" he asked.
"She thinks you a brute," I said frankly.
Juan Pablo reflected.
"I don't much mind her thinking that," he answered slowly.
"She hates you," I went on.
"And I don't seriously object to her thinking that," he replied."
"She despises you," I said in despair.
"Ah!" said Juan Pablo, with a change of voice. "I should object to her doing that. But then it isn't true."
I gave up efforts to persuade him. After all, the brute knew something about women.
I was thrown back upon the first plan. Olivia must escape from the country on the Ariadne. How to smuggle her unnoticed out of her empty house, down to La Guya, and on board the steamer? That was the problem; but though I lay awake over it o' nights, and pondered it as I sat at my writing-table, the days crept on and brought me no nearer to a solution.
Meanwhile, the world was going very ill with Olivia. San Paulo, fresh from its war, was aflame with patriotism. The story of Don Felipe's treachery had gone abroad—Juan Pablo had seen to that—and since his daughter had been his secretary, she too was tarnished. The doors of her friends were closed upon her, with the exception of Enrique Ximenes. If she ventured abroad, she was insulted in the street, and at night a lamp in a window of her house would bring a stone crashing through the pane. Whenever I saw her, I noticed with an aching heart the tension under which she laboured. Her face grew thin, the tone had gone from her voice, the lustre from her eyes, the very gloss from her hair. Sometimes it seemed to me that she must drop into Juan Pablo's net. I raged vainly over my problem. I could have knocked the heads together of the diminutive soldiers at the sides of the President's doorway whenever I went in and out. And then, when I was at my wits' end, a trivial incident suddenly showed me a way out.
I passed down the Calle Madrid one night, and the sight of the big, dark house, with here and there a broken window, brought before my mind so poignant a picture of the girl sitting in some back room alone and in misery, and contrasted that picture so vividly with another made familiar to me by many an evening in San Paulo—that of a girl shining exquisite beyond her peers in the radiance and the clean strength of her youth—that upon returning to my room I took the receiver from the telephone with no other thought than to talk to her for a few moments and encourage her to keep a good heart. I gave the number of her house to the Exchange, and the answer came promptly back
"The line is out of order."
I might have known that it would be. Olivia was to be marooned in her great town- house as effectively as though she had been set down in a lone island of the southern seas. I hung up the receiver again, and as I hung it up suddenly I saw part of the way clear. I suppose that I had used that telephone a hundred times during the past week. It had stood all day at my elbow. Yet not until to-night had it reminded me of that little matter of the Opera House—one of those cases in which dealings with Juan Pablo had left their mark. I had the answer to a part of the problem which troubled me. I saw a way to smuggle Olivia from San Paulo on board the Ariadne. The more I thought upon it, the clearer grew that possibility. But there still remained the other half. There still remained the question: How to get Olivia unnoticed from her house in the middle of a busy, narrow street on the night when the Ariadne was to sail. The difficulties there brought me to a stop. And I was still revolving the problem in my mind when the private bell rang from Juan Pablo's room. I went to see what he wanted; and I had not been five minutes in his presence before, with a leaping heart, I realised that this question was being answered too.
Juan Pablo had of late been troubled. But not at all about Olivia. As far as she was concerned, he ate his meals, went about his business, and slept o' nights like any good man who has not a girl in torments upon his conscience. But he was troubled about a rumour which was spreading through the town.
"You have heard of it?" he asked of me. "It is said that I am proposing to run away secretly from Maldivia."
I nodded.
"I have laughed at it, of course."
"Yes," said he, with his face in a frown. "But the rumour grows. I doubt if laughter is enough;" and then he banged his fist violently upon the table and cried: "I suppose Don Felipe is at the bottom of it!"
Don Felipe had become something of an obsession to the President. I think he excused to himself his brutality towards Olivia by imagining everywhere Don Felipe's machinations. As a fact, the rumour was spontaneous in San Paulo. It was generally suspected that the President had annexed the war indemnity and any other portions of the revenue which he could without too open a scandal. He was a bachelor. The whole of San Paulo put itself in his place. What else should he do but retire secretly and expeditiously to some country where he could enjoy the fruits of his industry in peace and security? Don Felipe had nothing whatever to do with the story. But I did not contradict Juan Pablo,and he continued—"It is said that I have taken my passage in the Ariadne."
I started, but he was not looking at me.
"I must lay hold upon this rumour," he said, "and strangle it. I have thought of a way. I will give a party here on the evening of the day the Ariadne calls at La Guya. I will spend a great deal of money on that party. It will be plain that I have no thought of sailing on the Ariadne. I hope it will be plain that I have no thought of sailing at all. For I think everyone in San Paulo," he added with a grim laugh, "knows me well enough to feel sure that I should not spend a great deal of money on a party if I meant to run away from the place afterwards."
Considering San Paulo impartially, I found the reasoning to be sound. Juan Pablo was not a generous man. He took, but he did not give.
"This is what I propose," he said, and he handed me a paper on which he had jotted down his arrangements. He had his heart set on his "one-eyed Republic" as he called it, that I knew. But I knew too that it must have been a fearful wrench for him to decide upon the lavish expenditure of this entertainment. There was to be dancing in the ballroom, a conjuror where the Cabinet met—that seemed to be a happy touch—supper in a marquee, fairy lights and fireworks in the garden, and buffets everywhere.
"You yourself will see after the invitations," he said, with a grin.
"Certainly, your Excellency," I answered. They would come within the definition of "opportunities."
"But here," he continued, "is a list of those who must be asked "; and it was not until I had the list in my hand that I began to see that here I might find an answer to my question. I looked quickly down the names.
"Yes, she's there," said Juan Pablo; and there she was, as plain as a pikestaff—Olivia Halvera. I was not surprised. Juan Pablo never troubled about such trifles as consistency. He wanted her, so he invited her. Nevertheless, I could have danced a pas seul. For though Olivia could hardly slip out of her own house in any guise without detection since she had no visitors, she would have a good chance of escaping from the throng of guests at the President's party. I left Juan Pablo with a greatly lightened heart. I looked at my watch. It was not yet eleven. Full of my idea, nothing would serve me but I must this moment set it in motion. I went downstairs into the Square. Though the night was hot, I had slipped on an overcoat to conceal the noticeable breastplate of a white shirt, and I walked quickly for half a mile until I came opposite to a high and neglected building, a place of darkness and rough shutters. This was the Opera House. Beside the Opera House was a little dwelling. I rang the bell, and the door was opened by a tall, lean gentleman in a frock-coat. For the third time that night good luck had stood my friend.
"Mr. Henry P. Crowninshield," I said, "the world-famous impresario I believe?"
"And you, Mr. Carlyon, are the President's private secretary?" he said coldly.
"Not to-night," said I.
With a grunt Mr. Crowninshield led the way into his parlour and stood with his finger-tips resting on the table and his long body bent over it. Mr. Crowninshield came from New York City, and I did not beat about the bush with him. I told him exactly the story of Olivia and Juan Pablo.
"She is in great trouble," I concluded. "There is something which I do not understand. But it comes to this. She must escape. The railways are watched, so is her house. There is only one way of escape—and that is on the seventeenth, the night when the Ariadne calls at La Guya and the President gives his party."
Mr. Crowninshield nodded, and his long body slid with a sort of fluid motion into a chair.
"Go on, sir," he said; "I am interested."
"And I encouraged," said I. "Let us follow the Signorita's proceedings on the night of the seventeenth. She goes dressed in her best to the President's party. She is on view to the last possible moment. She then slips quietly out into the garden. In the garden wall there is a private door, of which I have a key. I let her out by that door. Outside that door there is a closed, inconspicuous carriage waiting for her. She slips into that carriage—and that is where you come in."
"How?" asked Mr. Crowninshield.
"Inside the carriage she finds a disguise—dress, wig, everything complete—a disguise easy to slip on over her ball-gown and sufficient to baffle a detective half a yard away."
"You shall have it, sir! My heart bleeds for that young lady!" cried Mr. Crowninshield, and he grasped my hand in the noblest fashion. He had been a baritone in his day. "Besides," and he descended swiftly to the mere level of a human being, "I have a score against Master Pablo, and I should like to get a little of my own back."
That was precisely the point of view upon which I had counted. Throughout his first term of office Juan Pablo had hired a box at the Opera. Needless to say, he had never paid for it, and Mr. Crowninshield unwisely pressed for payment. When requests failed, Mr. Crowninshield went to threats. He threatened the Law, the American Eagle, and the whole of the United States Navy. Juan Pablo's reply had been short, sharp, and decisive. The State telephone system was being overhauled. Juan Pablo moved the Exchange to a building on the other side of the Opera House, and then summarily closed the Opera House on the ground that the music prevented the operators from hearing the calls. It was not astonishing that Mr. Crowninshield was eager to help Olivia Halvera. He lit a candle and led me through his private door across the empty theatre, ghostly with its sheeted benches, to the wardrobe-room. We chose a nun's dress, long enough to hide Olivia's gown, and a coif which would conceal her hair and overshadow her face.
"In that her own father wouldn't know her. It will be dark; the Quay is ill-lighted, she has only to shuffle like an old woman; she will go third-class, of course, in the train. Who is to see her off?"
"No one," I answered. "I dread that half-hour in the train for her without a friend at her side. The Quay will be watched, too. She must run the gauntlet alone. Luckily there will be a crowd of harvesters returning to Spain. Luckily, also, she has courage. But it will be the worst of her trials. My absence would be noticed. I can't go."
"No, but I can!" cried Mr. Crowninshield. "An old padre seeing off an old nun to her new mission—eh? Juan Pablo will be gritting his teeth in the morning because I am an American citizen."
Mr. Crowninshield was aflame with his project. He took a stick and tottered about the room in the most comical fashion. "I will bring the fly myself to the garden door," said he. "I will be inside of it. My property man—he comes from Poughkeepsie—shall be the driver. I will dress the young lady as we drive slowly to the station, and Sister Pepita and the Padre Antonio will direct their feeble steps to the darkest corner of the worst-lit carriage in the train."
I thanked him with all my heart. It had seemed to me terrible that Olivia should have to make her way alone on board the steamer. Now she would have someone to enhearten and befriend her. I met Olivia once at the house of Enrique Ximenes, and made her acquainted with the scheme, and on the night of the sixteenth the steamship agent rang me up on the telephone.
"The Ariadne will arrive at nine to-morrow night. The passengers will leave San Paulo at half past ten. Good luck!"
I went to the window and looked out over the garden. The marquee was erected, the fairy lights strung upon the trees, a set piece with the portrait of Juan Pablo and a Latin motto—semper fidelis—raised its monstrous joinery against the moon. Twenty-four hours more and, if all went well, Olivia would be out upon the high seas, on her way to Trinidad.- Surely all must go well. I went over in my mind every detail of our preparations. I recognised only one chance of failure—the chance that Mr. Crowninshield in his exuberance might over-act his part. But I was wrong. It was, after all, Olivia who brought our fine scheme to grief.
V.
There is no doubt about it. Women are not reasonable beings. Otherwise Olivia would never have come to the President's party in a white lace coat over a clinging gown of white satin. She looked beautiful, bub I was dismayed when I saw her. She had come with the Ximenes, and I took her aside, and I am afraid that I scolded her.
"But you told me," she expostulated, "I was to spare no pains. There must, be nothing of the traveller about me; "and there was not. From the heels of her satin slippers to the topmost tress of her hair she was dressed as she alone could dress in San Paulo.
"But of course I meant you to wear black," I whispered.
"Oh, I didn't think of it," Olivia exclaimed wearily. "Please don't lecture;" and she dropped into a chair with such a lassitude upon her face that I thought she was going to faint.
"It doesn't matter," I said hastily. "No doubt the disguise will cover it. At ten o'clock, slip down into the garden. Until then, dance!"
"Dance!" she exclaimed, looking piteously up into my face.
"Yes," I insisted impatiently, and taking her hand, I raised her from her chair.
She had no lack of partners, for the President himself singled her out and danced in a quadrille with her. Others timorously followed his example. But though she did dance, I was grievously disappointed—for a time. It seemed that her soul was flickering out in her. Just when she most needed her courage and her splendid spirit, she failed of them.
There were only two more hours after a long fortnight of endurance. Yet those two last hours, it seemed, she could not face. I know now that I never acted with greater cruelty than on that night when I kept her dancing. But even while she danced, there came to me some fear that I had misjudged her. I watched her from a corner of the ballroom. There was a great change in her. Her face seemed to me smaller, her eyes bigger, darker even, and luminous with some haunting look. But there was more. I could not define the change—at first. Then the word came to me. There was a spirituality in her aspect which was new to her, an unearthliness. Surely, I thought, the fruit of great suffering; and blundering, with the truth under my very nose, I began to ask myself a foolish question. Had Harry Vandeleur played her false?
A movement of the company awakened me. A premonitory sputter of rockets drew the guests to the cloak-room, from the cloak- room to the garden. I saw Oh via fetch her lace coat and slip it over her shoulders like the rest. It was close upon ten. The Fates were favouring us, or perhaps I was favouring the Fates. For I had arranged that the fireworks should begin just a few minutes before the hour struck. In the darkness of the garden Olivia could slip away, and her absence would not afterwards be noticed.
I waited at the garden door. I heard the clock strike. I saw Juan Pablo's profile in fire against a dark blue sky of velvet and stars. I shook hands with myself in that the moon would not rise till one. And then a whiteness gleamed between the bushes, and Olivia was at my side. Her hand sought mine and clung to it. I opened the postern and looked out into a little street. The lamps of a closed fly shone twenty yards away, and but for the fly the street was empty.
"Now!" I whispered.
We ran out. I opened the carriage door. I caught a glimpse of horn spectacles, a lantern-jawed, unshaven face, a shovel hat; and I heard a stifled oath. Mr. Crowninshield, too, had noticed Olivia's white gown. She jumped in, I shut the door, and the carriage rolled away. I went back into the garden, where Juan Pablo's profile was growing ragged.
Of the next hour or two I have only confused memories. I counted stages in Olivia's progress as I passed from room to room among the guests. Now she would have reached the station; now the train had stopped on the quay at La Guya; now, perhaps, the gangway had been withdrawn and the great ship was warping out into the river. At one o'clock I smoked a cigarette in the garden. From the marquee came the clatter of supper. In the sky the moon was rising. And somewhere outside the three-mile limit a rippling path of silver struck across the Ariadne's dark bows. I was conscious of a swift exultation. I heard the throb of the screw and saw the water flashing from the ship's sides.
Then I remembered that I had left the garden door unlocked. I went to it and by chance looked out into the street. I received a shock. For, twenty yards away, the lights of a closed carriage shone quietly beside the kerb. I wondered whether the last few hours had been really the dream of a second. I even looked back into the garden, to make sure that the profile of Juan Pablo was not still sputtering in fire. Then a detail or two brought me relief. The carriage was clearly a private carriage, not a fly; the driver on the box wore livery—at all events, I saw a flash of bright buttons on his coat. In my relief I walked from the garden towards the carriage. The driver recognised me most likely—recognised, at all events, that I came from the private door of the President's garden. For he made some kind of salute.
I supposed that he had been told to wait at this spot, away from the park of carriages, and I should have turned back but for a circumstance which struck me as singular. It was a very hot night, and yet not only were the windows of the carriage shut, but the blinds were drawn close besides. I could not see into the carriage, but there was light at the edges of the blinds. A lamp was burning inside. I stood on the pavement, and a chill struck into my blood and made me shiver. I listened. There was no sound of any movement within the carriage. It must be empty. I assured myself and again doubted. The little empty street, the closed carriage with the light upon the edges of the blinds, the absolute quiet, daunted me. I stepped forward and gently opened the door. I saw Olivia. There was no trace of the nun's gown, nor the coif. But that her hair was ruffled she might this moment have left Juan Pablo's drawing-room.
She turned her face to me, shook her head, and smiled.
"It was of no use, my friend," she said gently. "They were on the watch at La Guya. An officer brought me back. He has gone in to ask Juan Pablo what he shall do with me."
Olivia had given up the struggle—that was clear.
"It was Crowninshield's fault! " I cried.
"No, it was mine," she answered. And here is what had happened, as I learnt it afterwards. All had gone well until the train reached La Guya. There the police were on the look-out for her. The Padre Antonio, however, excited no suspicion, and very likely Sister Pepita would have passed unnoticed too. But as she stepped down from the carriage on to the step, and from the step to the ground, an officer was startled by the unexpected appearance of a small foot in a white silk stocking and a white satin slipper. Now, the officer had seen nuns before, old and young, but never had he seen one in white satin shoes, to say nothing of the silk stockings. He became more than curious. He pointed her out to his companions. Sister Pepita was deftly separated in the crowd from the Padre Antonio—cut out, to borrow the old nautical phrase—and arrested. She was conducted towards a room in the station, but the steamer's siren hooted its warning to the passengers, and despair seized upon Olivia. She made a rush for the gangway, she was seized, she was carried forcibly into the room and stripped of her nun's disguise and coif. She was kept a prisoner in the room until the Ariadne had left the quay. Then she was placed in a carriage and driven back, with an officer of the police at her side, to the garden door of the President's house.
Something of this Olivia told me at the time, but she was interrupted by the return of the officer and a couple of Juan Pablo's messengers.
"His Excellency will see you," said the officer to her. He conducted her through the garden and by the private doorway into Juan Pablo's study. I had followed behind the servants and I remained in the room. We waited for a few minutes, and Juan Pablo came in. He went quickly over to Olivia's side. His voice was all gentleness. But that was his way with her, and I set no hopes on it.
"I am grieved, Signorita, if you have suffered rougher treatment than befits you. But you should not have tried to escape."
Olivia looked at him with a piteous helplessness in her eyes. "What am I to do, ten? " she seemed to ask, and, with the question, to lose the last clutch upon her spirit. For her features quivered, she dropped into a chair, laid her arms upon the table, and, burying her face in them, burst into tears.
It was uncomfortable—even for Juan Pablo. There came a look of trouble in his face, a shadow of compunction. For myself, the heaving of her young shoulders hurt my eyes, the sound of her young voice breaking in sobs tortured my ears. But this was not the worst of it, for she suddenly threw herself back in her chair with the tears wet upon her cheeks, and, beating the table piteously with the palms of her hands, she cried—
"I am hungry—oh, so hungry!"
"Good Heavens!" cried Juan Pablo. He started forward, staring into her face.
"But you knew," said Olivia, and he turned away to one of the messengers, and bade him bring some supper into the room.
"And be quick," said I.
"Yes, yes, be quick," said Juan Pablo.
At last I had the key to her. She had been starving, in that great, empty house in the Calle Madrid. "A fortnight!" she had cried in dismay. I understood now the reason of her terror. She had known that she would have to starve. And she had held her head high, making no complaint, patiently enduring. It was not her spirit which had failed her. I cursed myself for a fool as once more I enthroned her. Her face had grown smaller, her eyes bigger. There was a look of spirituality which I had not seen before. I had noticed the signs, and I had misread them. Her lassitude this evening, her vain struggle with the police, her apathy under their treatment of her, were all explained. Not her courage, but her body had failed her. She was starving.
A tray was brought in and placed before her. She dried her eyes and with a sigh she drew her chair in to the table and ate, indifferent to the presence of Juan Pablo, of the officer who remained at the door, and of myself. Juan Pablo stood and watched her. "Good Heavens!" he said again softly, and going to her side he filled her glass with champagne.
She nodded her thanks and raised it to her lips almost before he had finished pouring. A little colour came into her cheeks and she turned again to her supper. She was a healthy girl. There never had been anything of the drooping lily about Olivia. She had always taken an interest in her meals, however dainty she might look. The knowledge of that made her starvation doubly cruel—not only to her. Juan Pablo sat down opposite to her. There was no doubt now about the remorse in his face. He never took his eyes from her as she ate. Once she looked up and saw him watching her.
"But you knew," she said. "I was alone in the house. How much money did you leave there for me when you took my father away? A few dollars which your men had not discovered."
"But you yourself " he stammered.
"I was at a ball," said Olivia scornfully. "How much money does a girl take with her to a ball? Where would she put it?"
There was no answer to that question. "The next day I went to the bank," she continued. "My father's money was impounded. You had seen to that. All the unpaid bills came in in a stream. I couldn't pay them. I could get no credit. You had seen to that. My friends left me alone. Of course I starved; you knew that I should. You meant me to," and, with the air of one who has been wasting time, she turned again to her supper.
"I never thought that you would hold out," stammered Juan Pablo. I had never seen him in an apologetic mood before, and he looked miserable. "I hadn't seen that you were starving."
Olivia looked up at him. It was not so much that her face relented, as that it showed an interest in something beyond her supper.
"Yes," she said, nodding at him. "I think that's true. You hadn't seen with your own eyes that I was starving. So my starving wasn't very real to you."
Juan Pablo changed her plate and filled her glass again.
"Ah!" said Olivia with satisfaction, hitching up her chair still closer. She was really having a good square meal.
"But why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
"I told no one," said Olivia, shaking her head. "I thought that I could manage till to-night. Once or twice I called on the Ximenes at luncheon-time, and I had one or two dollars. No; I would tell no one."
"Yes," said Juan Pablo, "I understand that. It's the reason why I wanted you."
And at this sign of his comprehension of her, Olivia again looked at him, and again the interest in her eyes was evident.
At last she pushed back her chair. The tray was removed. Juan Pablo offered her a cigarette. She smiled faintly as she took it. Certainly her supper had done her a world of good. She lit her cigarette and leaned her elbows on the table.
"And now," she said, "what do you mean to do with me?"
Juan Pablo went to his bureau, wrote on a sheet of paper and brought the paper to Olivia.
"You can show this at the railway station to-morrow," he said, and he laid the permit on the table and turned away.
Women are not reasonable people. For the second time that night Olivia forced me to contemplate that trite reflection. For now that she had got what she had suffered hunger and indignities to get, she merely played with it with the tips of her fingers, looking now upon the table, now at Juan Pablo's back, and now upon the table again.
"And you? " she said gently. "What will become of you?"
I suppose Juan Pablo was the only one in the room who did not notice the softness of her voice. To me it was extraordinary. He had tortured her with hunger, exposed her to the gentle methods of his police, yet the fact that he did these things because he wanted her seemed to make him suddenly valuable to her now that she was free of him.
Juan Pablo turned round and leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
"I?" he said. "I shall just stay on alone here until some day someone gets stronger than I am, perhaps, and puts me up against the wall outside——"
"Oh, no!" cried Olivia, interrupting him.
"Well, one never knows," said his Excellency, shrugging his shoulders. He turned to the window and drew aside the curtains. The morning had come. It was broad daylight outside.
"You had better get the Signorita a carriage," he said to the officer at the door. As the man went out, the music from the ballroom floated in. Juan Pablo hesitated, and no shock which Olivia had given to me came near the shock which his next words produced.
"Don Felipe shall have his money. You can draw on it, Signorita, to-morrow, before you go."
"Thank you," she said.
The messenger reappeared. A carriage was waiting. Olivia rose and looked at Juan Pablo timidly. He walked ceremoniously to the door and held it open.
"Good night," she said.
He bowed and smiled in a friendly fashion enough, but he did not answer. It seemed that he had spoken his last word to her. She hesitated and went out. At once the President took a quick step towards me.
"Do you know what is said to-night?" he said violently.
I drew back. I could not think what he meant. To tell the truth, I found him rather alarming.
"No," I answered.
"Why, that I have given this party as a farewell; that I am still going to bolt from Maldivia. Do you see? I have spent all this money for nothing."
I drew a breath of relief. His violence was not aimed against me.
"That's a pity," I said. "But the rumour can still be killed. I thought of a way yesterday."
"Will it cost much?" he asked.
"Very little."
"What am I to do?"
"Paint the Presidential House," said I. "It wants it badly, and all San Paulo will be very sure that you wouldn't spend money in paint if you meant to run away."
"That's a good idea," said he, and he sat down at once and began to figure out the expense. "A couple of hundred dollars will do it."
"Not well," said I.
"We don't want it done well," said Juan Pablo. "Two men on a plank will be enough. A couple of hundred dollars is too much. Half that will be quite sufficient. By the way"—and he sat with his pen poised—"just run after—her-and tell her that Vandeleur is landing to-morrow at Trinidad. I invented some business for him there." He bent down over the desk. His back was towards the door. As I turned the handle, someone was opening it from the other side. It was Olivia Halvera.
"I came back," she said, with the colour mantling in her face. "You see, I am going away to-morrow—and I hadn't said 'Good-bye.'"
Juan Pablo must have heard her voice.
"Please go and give that message," he said sharply. "And shut the door! I don't want to be disturbed."
Olivia drew back quickly. I was amazed to see that she was hurt.
"His message is for you," I said severely. "Harry Vandeleur lands at Trinidad to-morrow."
"Thank you," she said slowly; she turned away and walked as slowly down the passage. "Good-bye," she said, with her back towards me.
"I will see you off to-morrow, Signorita," I said; and she turned back to me.
"No," she said gently. "Don't do that! We will say 'Good-bye' here."
She gave me her hand—she had been on the point of going without even doing that.
"Thank you very much," she added, and she walked rather listlessly away. She left me with an uneasy impression that her thanks were not very sincere. I am bound to admit that Olivia puzzled me that night. But as I watched her go, I thought that I would keep my bewilderment to myself. I have never asked Harry Vandeleur, for instance, whether he could explain it. I went back to the study.
"I think fifty dollars will be ample," said Juan Pablo, still figuring on his paper. "Has she gone?"
"She is going," said I. He rose from his chair, broke off a rose from a bowl of flowers which, on this night only, decorated the room. Then he opened the window and leaned out. Olivia, I reckoned, would be just at this moment stepping into the carriage. He tossed the rose down and drew back quickly out of sight.
"Shall it be green paint, your Excellency?" I asked.
His Excellency, I regret to say, swore loudly.
"Never in this world!" said he.
I had left the door open. The music of a languorous and melting waltz filled the room.
"I do loathe music!" cried Juan Pablo violently. It was the nearest approach to a sentimental remark that I had ever heard him make.
Copyright, 1909, by W. E. w. Mason, in the United States of America.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1948, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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