by John Buchan
“I am not sure that I do know. This purpose? You do not want to cripple a great industry? You have no special grievance, I take it, against the republic of Olifa? You are not fanatics about forms of government? Am I to take it that your efforts are directed principally against me?”
“You may put it that way if you like. But we have no personal animus against your Excellency. Blenkiron, who has worked with you for nearly two years, rather likes you. We are all prepared to give you devoted allegiance.”
“Provided I do what you want?”
“Provided you do what we want. We are anxious to prevent you making a fool of yourself.”
It was the elder man’s turn to laugh. “Then I suppose I should be grateful, and I am certainly flattered. But I should like to know just what you consider my capacities in the way of folly.”
“I hate to repeat platitudes,” said Sandy, “but, since you insist, you shall have them. You have created a great industry, but you are following what seems to us an unbusinesslike line. You are using up your human material too rapidly. I put aside the moral question, and ask you simply if that is good business. Of course it isn’t, and since you do not do things without a purpose, we had to discover that purpose. Well, we know perfectly well what it is. You are trying to make bad trouble in a world which has already too much trouble. We do you the justice to admit that this is not blind malevolence. You have an ideal behind you, a philosophy, a very serious philosophy. Well, to be frank, we don’t like your methods, and we don’t like your purpose, and we hate your philosophy like hell. Do we understand each other?”
The Gobernador shook out the ashes from his pipe. His eyes, under his level brows, looked steadily on his companion. There was now no smile on his face, and in his gaze there was a serious perplexity.
“Lord Clanroyden,” he said, “I have known about you for some years — under your old name. I have even made it my business to keep in touch with you through my informants. I have always regarded you as a person of quite exceptional intelligence. There have been times when I considered you one of the two or three most intelligent people in the world...I confess that I am grievously disappointed.”
“No wonder,” said Sandy. “I have always been a bit of an ass.”
“I don’t complain that our aims differ. Your reputation was never that of a thinker. But you were reported to me as a practical man, uncommonly audacious, resourceful, and far-sighted. Now I find that you are audacious — but with the audacity of a crude boy. You have organised a childish little piece of banditry. You think you have fathomed my methods. Why, man, you have not learned the alphabet of them. I have my lines down deep in every country on the globe. The Gran Seco has purchase with every Government. As soon as the news of your doings has gone abroad, you will have the most potent forces set at work to defeat you. The prosperity of the Gran Seco is of vital importance to millions up and down the world. The credit of Governments, the interests of a thousand financial groups are involved. The very people who might otherwise sympathise with you will be forced to combine to break you.”
“True,” said Sandy. “But you realise that your name as our leader will cramp the style of your supporters.”
“Only for a moment. It will not be believed...”
“I am not so sure. Remember, you are a mystery man, Excellency, whom the world has heard of, but does not know. You have been playing a pretty game with the press, but we too have made our plans. The newspapers by this time will be full of character-studies of the Gobernador of the Gran Seco, arranged for by us. In spite of yourself, you are going to get the reputation of a high-souled humanitarian, a cross between Bolivar and Abraham Lincoln. I think we shall get in first with our picture, and — well, you know what the public is. It will be difficult to efface first impressions, and that, I say, will cramp the style of your people and give us time.”
“But what earthly good will time do you? That is my second charge against your intelligence. You have chosen to fight me with weapons so infantile that they will break in a week...What were you and Blenkiron thinking of to put your eggs in this preposterous basket? I have many vulnerable points. I know that, if you do not. You and your friends might have slowly organised the collective stupidity of the world against me. You had your fulcrum in America, and for lever you had all the crude sentimentality of mankind. I have always feared such a crusade. Why did you not attempt it?”
“I will tell you why,” was the answer. “It was because we respected you too sincerely. We knew that we couldn’t beat you at that game. To fight you in parliaments, and cabinet councils, and on the stock exchanges and in the press would have been to fight you on your own chosen ground. We preferred to fight you on our ground. We decided to transfer the whole contest to a sphere in which your genius was not at home. You are the last word in civilisation, Excellency, and you can only be beaten by getting you into the ancient and elementary world where civilisation does not apply.”
The other did not answer for a moment. Something in the words seemed to have started a new train of thought, and his eyes took on a profound abstraction. Then he leaned forward.
“There is method in that,” he said, “I do not quarrel with your policy. But, in the name of all that is rational, where are your weapons? A handful of children, a disloyal colleague who has no doubt worked upon the turbulent element among our white employees, my kidnapping, and the fact that my administration was a somewhat personal matter — these may give you control of the Gran Seco for a day or two. But what then? There are the wealth and the army of Olifa to crush you like a nut on an anvil.”
“Not quite so bad. You underestimate Blenkiron, I think. Remember he has been in the Gran Seco for some time, and he has not been idle. We have the Mines Police, and most of the Mines foremen and engineers. When I left yesterday, the place was as docile as a girls’ school, and there was a very stout heart in our troops.”
“Troops!” the other said. “You may have got your non-commissioned officers, but where can you get the rank-and-file for an army?”
“Where you got your labour, Excellency. Among the old masters of the country. You must have heard of the trouble that the Gran Seco Indians used to give to Olifa. They were never properly conquered till you came along. You policed them and dragooned them, but the dragoons are now on their side. A couple of years more and you would have drained the manhood from them and left then mere shells of men. But at present they are still a people and a fighting people, and they are going to fight for liberty and vengeance. Not against you — they regard you as their saviour, and are wearing your medals round their necks — but against the oppressors of Olifa...I think you lived too much of a sedentary life, Excellency. You took the word of your subordinates too much on trust. If you had lived as I have among the pueblas, you would have been a little afraid of what you found there...Perhaps a little shocked, too...Those rags and tatters of men, used up in the mines and flung on the dustheap! The remnant of manhood left in them is not a gentle thing.”
“But against the army of Olifa! I have made it my business to see that that army is the most efficient for its size in the world. What can your savages and your gunmen do against the last word of science from the laboratory and the factory?”
“Nothing if we fight them in their own way. A good deal, I think, if we fight them in ours. We refuse to meet you on your own ground, Excellency, and you may be certain that we don’t mean to meet the Olifa army on theirs.”
“I cannot follow your riddles.”
“Of course you can’t. This is a very academic discussion we’re having. If you’ll allow me, I’ll explain to you later he general layout. You’re entitled to have everything shown you. It will interest you, as a thinker, for, though you’ll scarcely believe it, we too have our philosophy of life. You are a very wise man, with a large experience of the world, but I believe we can show you something which you know nothing about.”
The other was listening intently. “This wonderful revelation?
” he asked. “What is it?”
“The meaning of youth,” was the answer. “You have lived all your life in an elderly world, Excellency. Everything worked by rule, and even your lawlessness was nicely calculated. And all the old stagnant things were your puppets which you could move as you pleased. But there’s another side of which you know nothing at all. You have your science; well, it will be matched against hope and faith and the simplicity that takes chances. We may go down, but we’ll go down cheerfully, and, if we win, by God, we’ll make you a new man.”
A strange look came into the other’s face. He regarded Sandy with a bewilderment in his stern eyes which seemed not altogether unfriendly.
“I cannot quite understand,” he said, as he rose, “why you and your friends did not take the simple course. Since your quarrel is principally with me, a bullet in my head strikes me as the most satisfactory solution.”
Sandy stood before him, a head shorter, a stone or two lighter, looking at the moment half his age. There was a dancing light in his eyes which answered the flickering spark in the other’s. He laid a hand on the Gobernador’s sleeve, as if the great man were a coeval.
“Nonsense!” he said. “We leave murder to your Conquistadors. We think so highly of you that we’re going to have a try at saving your soul.”
II
The wireless station on the plateau received its punctual bulletins of news from the outer world, copies of which were posted up in the mess-hut. From them it appeared that the republic of Olifa was already in the throes of a campaign. War had begun when on the 14th day of June. The city of the Gran Seco had been seized by the rebels, and the whole province was in revolt. The whereabouts of Castor were not known; his lieutenants held the city, but he was reputed to be with the main force of the revolt, somewhere in the hinterland. Olifa had replied to the challenge. Her army was mobilised, and a Gran Seco Expeditionary Force was in being. The aged General Bianca, the Minister of War, did not take command; for that post the President had selected a younger man, General Lossberg, who had been military governor of the city of Olifa, and had come there after the European War with a high reputation from the Eastern Front, where he had been one of Mackensen’s corps commanders. The Expeditionary Force was said to contain four divisions of infantry, a cavalry brigade, and four of the new machine-gun battalions.
The comments of the world’s press on the outbreak were curiously restrained. Some influence must have been at work, for the current story represented the revolt as that of the leaders of the copper industry against an oppressive Government, which confiscated their profits and by inhuman laws was ruining their reservoir of native labour. Thus stated, humanity and sound business seemed to be on the side of the rebels. Strange tales were printed of the barbarities of conscripted labour, of men worn to husks and sent back to their villages to die. The picture presented was of enlightened magnates forced unwillingly into harshness by the greed of Olifa, until finally decency and common sense forced them to make a stand. A spontaneous labour revolt had been sponsored by the masters themselves, and at the head stood Castor, the Gobernador. It seemed a clear issue, on which the conscience of the world could not be divided. There were papers in England, France, and America which hailed Castor as a second Lincoln.
Yet the more responsible section of the press walked warily, which seemed to point to conflicting versions of the facts among those likely to know best. Such papers were guarded in their comments on the merits of the dispute, and treated it as a domestic Olifa question on which exact information was lacking. Patently the Gran Seco agents throughout the world were puzzled and were holding their hand. Their chief was playing a game on which they had not been instructed. The news columns of such papers were filled with sensational accounts of Gran Seco wealth and luxury and of Indian pueblas full of the broken and diseased, but the leading articles steered a discreet course.
Castor was no doubt a great man, possibly a man of destiny, but the end was not yet — and Olifa had been of late a particularly docile and well-conducted republic. The world seemed to agree to make a ring round the combatants.
Only the scallywags and the restless youth of all nations were prepared to take sides, and consulates and passport-offices were plagued by those who wished to reach the seat of war. There were perpetual queues at the door of the Gran Seco offices in London, New York, and Paris.
One body of men alone had decided views — the military critics. Among these there was a remarkable unanimity. The revolt, in their opinion, could not sustain itself for more than a few weeks. The details of the Olifa army were well known. It was officered by able professional soldiers, it had been a pioneer in mechanisation, and The Times had published from a contributor some striking articles on its efficiency; it had behind it a wealthy Government, and should the need arise, a big population to conscript; above all, it had an open door to the sea. The rebels must be and the best a rabble of Indian labourers and European miners with a sprinkling, no doubt, of soldiers of fortune. They might be armed after a fashion, but they could not compete with the armoury of Olifa. They had no communication open with the outer world. Assuming that they had laid in a store of ammunition, they could not supply wastage. The Gran Seco, which was largely a desert, could not feed itself and the rebels would be starved out long before they wen defeated. It was like a fugitive who had climbed a tree; the pursuit had only to wait below till he was forced by hunger to come down. General Weyland in the London Times, and Mr Winter Spokes in the New York Herald Tribune reached the same conclusion.
The campaign had begun; according to the wireless Olifa was an armed camp, and everything was in train for and advance on the Gran Seco; but in the Courts of the Morning there was peace. There was activity enough. Daily aeroplanes left the shelf for long flights beyond the foot-hills and over the arid steppes of the Gran Seco to the savannah and forests of Olifa, now sweltering under the first deluge of the rainy season. Strings of convoys ascended by the rough paths and departed with their stores. Horsemen arrived hourly with messages, and every yard of the settlement was busy. Yet it seemed a peaceful busyness. The workers met at meals and in the evenings with the cheerfulness of weary but equable folk. There was no tension in the atmosphere. Castor for the most part had his meals in his own room, but he invariably appeared at dinner, and he seemed to be in good health and spirits. Though under constant surveillance, he had the illusion of liberty, and could walk abroad with Janet and Barbara as if he were a guest in a country-house. There was nothing about him of the feverish prisoner, and this disquieted Sandy.
“I haven’t begun to understand him,” he told Janet. “You see, all I know about him I know at second-hand from Blenkiron, and by deduction from his public career. I met him for the first time a week ago. Our only talk was just an exchange of polite challenges. We might have been shouting at each other from adjacent mountaintops...I don’t like that calm of his. Here you have a man whose brain has never stopped working, and who has the ambition of a fallen angel. He sees us trying to play havoc with his life’s work, and he makes no sign of impatience. What has his mind got to bite on? It can’t be idle.”
“He writes a great deal,” said Janet. “He has told me about it. I don’t think I quite understood, but isn’t there an Italian called Croce? Well, he thinks Croce all wrong about something, and is trying to explain how.”
“O Lord!” Sandy groaned. “The fellow is bigger than we thought. I didn’t reckon on this superhuman detachment. He must be very sure he is going to win.”
“Yes,” said Janet thoughtfully. “But not for the reasons that the wireless gives. He told me that he thought hat those military experts talked nonsense. I think he knows that he will win because he is bigger than we are. He has been studying us all most carefully. You especially, Sandy. Do you notice how he looks at you? I believe he was afraid of you before he met you.”
“But not now?”
“No. I’m sorry, but I don’t think he is so afraid of you now. I fancy he is alway
s a little uneasy about anything he does not understand. But he thinks he is getting to the bottom of you.”
“I daresay he is. But I’m nowhere near the bottom of him. None of the formulas fit him. It’s no good saying that he is pure intellect. He’s that, but he’s a great deal more. On his record I ought to hate him. He stands for everything I most detest, and he has been responsible for the bloodiest cruelties. On the bare facts of the case Nero was respectable compared to him...And yet I can’t hate him — simply because I can’t hold him responsible. He has no notion what he has done, for, with all his cleverness, there’s an odd, idiotic innocence about him. I nourished a most healthy disgust till I met him. But now, confound it, I rather like him.”
“So do I,” said the girl emphatically. “Barbara doesn’t but I do. And I believe he rather likes us — even you, Sandy. You see, we are something that he has never quite met before, and we interest him desperately. He is busy summing us up, and that gives his mind something to work on. Now that I know him, I could no more hate him than I could hate a cyclone or an erupting volcano.”
“You mean he is a sort of impersonal natural force?”
“No, I don’t. He is a person, but very limited — as limited as a cyclone. His energies and his interests have been constricted into a narrow channel. I think he lacks imagination.”
Sandy whistled.
“Good for you, Janet. I should have said that his imagination was the most deadly and colossal thing about him.”
“Yes — yes. But it is only one kind of imagination. Milton could imagine the scenery of Hell and Heaven, but he hadn’t enough imagination to understand his wife. He is still a little puzzled by us, and that makes him puzzled about himself. Up till now he had been mathematically certain about everything. If we make him uncertain, we may win...Now, I’m going to take him for a walk and continue his education.”
Presently, into the orderly routine of the plateau came something of the stir of war. Messengers from the lowlands became more frequent, and Sandy had to take his sleep when he could, for he might be called upon at any hour. The wireless operators were kept busy, and at night there was much activity in the ravine which dropped seaward, for unlighted ships groped their way into the secret gulf.