by John Buchan
For the last days she had been slipping dangerously near the edge of her self-control. Janet’s danger seemed only a part of the general crumbling of life. She had the sensation of walking on quicksands, with a thin crust between her and unspeakable things. But the ride in the forest — movement, even if it were towards the unknown and the darkness — had put vigour again into her blood, and now in this great hollow hand of the mountains, under a blazing canopy of stars, she felt an irrational hope. She turned to her companion, who had let his head sink back against the flaps of his saddle and was staring upwards.
“I thought the Courts of the Morning was a refuge,” she said, “but I think it must have been also a prison. I feel freer now...I feel nearer Janet.”
He did not answer. Then he asked: “Where were you brought up, Miss Dasent? What kind of life have you had? You can’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two.”
“I am twenty-four,” she said. She began to tell him of her childhood, for it comforted her to talk. She spoke of a rambling country-house high up in the South Carolina piedmont, with the blue, forested hills behind; of a childhood among old coloured servants; of winter visits to the Florida shores; of barbecues each autumn for the mountain folk; of spring gallops among upland meadows or on the carpeted trails in the pinewoods; of days with a bobbery pack of hounds in difficult pockety country. She found herself speaking easily and naturally as if to an old friend. Her school days in Charleston, her first visits to Washington and New York, her first crossing of the Atlantic — she made a pleasant picture of it all as stages in a progressive happiness.
“Why do you want to hear this?” she asked at length. “It is so different a world from yours — so very humble.”
“It is a different world — yes. I can judge one thing about you. You have never known fear. No man or woman or animal has ever made you afraid.”
She laughed. “How preposterous! I have been often terribly afraid.”
“No. You have never met a fear which you were not ready to face. You are brave by instinct, but perhaps you have not been tested. When you meet a fear which draws the blood from your heart and brain and the vigour from your nerves and still keep your face to it — that is the test.”
“Have you known such a fear?” she asked.
“I? How could I? You cannot fear what you despise! I have been too unhappily fortunate in life. I began with advantages. I was educated by my father, who was an embittered genius. I inherited very young a great fortune!...I was born in Austria, and therefore had no real country. Even before the war Austria was a conglomerate, not a people...I was brought up to despise the world, but I did not learn the lesson fully, for I excepted myself. I found that I was cleverer than other people, and that my brains enabled me to use those others. How could I ever be afraid of what I could use? For twenty years I have watched a world which I despised as futile, and pulled the strings of its folly. Some of those years were occupied by war. I took no apparent part in the war, for I had no fatherland, but I caught fish in its troubled waters. I evolved a philosophy, but I have never lied to myself, and I knew that I cared for that creed only because it flattered my egotism. I understood humanity well enough to play on its foibles. I thought that it was all foibles, save for one or two people like myself in each generation. I wanted to adjust the world so that it would be in the hands of this select few. Oh, I was supremely confident. I believed in the intellect, and mine told me that I was right. I even cultivated a dislike of the things and the people that were opposed to my creed. But there was no passion in my dislike — there is no passion in contempt, just as there is no fear. I have never been afraid — how could I, when I saw mankind like little ants running about on my errands? Therefore my courage has never been tried. But there is this difference between us — I know that you are brave, and I do not think that I am.”
“What nonsense!” Barbara exclaimed. “You have amazing fortitude. Look how you have behaved since we carried you off.”
“That was not fortitude, it was bewilderment. I have been beginning to wonder, to puzzle. I have never before been puzzled in my life. I have lost my contempt.”
“That is a good thing,” and she smiled. “My father had me taught Latin and I remember what an old bishop of the Middle Ages said. He said that the advancing stages in human wisdom were ‘spernere mundum, spernere sese, spernere nullum.’”
He lifted his head sharply.
“I have gone through the first stage,” he said. “I have despised the world. I think I have reached the second — I am coming to despise myself...and I am afraid.”
The ride next day was in a difficult country, for it became necessary, in order to avoid the deep-cut ravines of torrents, to climb high up on the mountainside. The path was good, for it had been used incessantly for transport during the last months, but the weather was vile, for the south-west wind brought a storm of rain, and the party rode all day in an icy bath. The track ran with water like a millstream, he trees were too scattered to give protection against the slanting spears of rain, and in the thicker coverts a steady shower-bath descended from the canopy.
Till the late afternoon the downpour continued, and what with slipping and plunging horses, water at every ford whirling to the riders’ boots, and the relentless soaking cataracts of rain, there was no bodily comfort that day.
Barbara, herself lithe and active as a boy, saw that the Gobernador bore the labour ill, and was very near the edge of his strength. He managed his horse clumsily, and often in the steeper places she took his bridle. At one of the fords it was only by a vigorous haul that she saved him from a ducking.
Before evening the rain ceased, the sun came out, and that high cold place there was no steamy mist, only a tonic smell of wet mountain soil and a jewelling of every and herb. The encampment at dusk was in a stony trough, where a shelf of rock made a deep overhang, and tents could be set up under it as under a roof. Barbara assisted the Gobernador to dismount, and so weary was he that he almost fell into her arms. She attended herself to his comfort, stripped off his soaking boots and blanket-coat, ransacked his valise for dry clothes, compounded with the assistance of Roger Grayne a merciless cocktail, and made his bed in a dry nook of rock not too far from the warmth of the fire. She found him curiously helpless, He was too weary to protest, and had as little knowledge of how to look after himself as a recruit on his first day’s service.
After supper he seemed to recover. A woman who has nursed a man feels a protective interest in him, and Barbara found a new ease in talking to him. How had she ever looked on one so helpless as a great criminal! She dropped the formal “Excellency” with which she had been in the habit of addressing him. She had made him get into his sleeping-bag at once, and eat his supper among a pile of coverings. Now he reclined like an ancient Roman at table, the great fire lighting up the rocky antrum and silhouetting against the darkness his noble head and brows and the nose like a ship’s prow.
“Do you know,” he said, “I have hardly ever in my life endured bodily discomfort or pain? I have never been ill. I know so little of what is in the world.”
He seemed to have divined the girl’s thoughts. He had used human beings as pawns, careless of their sufferings. She thought that Janet was right — that he had a short-range imagination. That was his defence. His cruelties had been blindness, rather than purposeful crime. She looked on him with a kindlier eye.
Then they spoke — a sure proof of intimacy — of their friends. Grayne sat with them for a little, and then went off on a tour of inspection. As he went, Castor’s eyes followed him. “That’s a good boy! You have many like him?”
“Plenty. America produces them in bulk.”
“And Britain. A different type, but the same in essentials. But they are only company officers — at the best, perhaps, brigadiers. It is commanders-in-chief that we need.”
“There is Lord Clanroyden,” said the girl.
“Perhaps. I am not sure. He has most of the gifts, but has he ever
faced fear — faced it, and gone through to the other side? His eye is that of a leader, but I do not see in it the depths of the man who has passed the ultimate test.”
“You are an acute observer,” she said.
“I am becoming one,” and he smiled. “I have observed something else...If it is a liberty, I ask forgiveness...I have noted that when he was near you you moved away, as if you shrank from too near a contact. A little nervous shiver ran over you. That does not mean dislike. I think it means that you are in love with him, for even when you moved away your eyes were happy.”
“I think you are very wise,” she said quietly. “But Lord Clanroyden will never have a thought for any woman...I am going to give you a hot drink, and then you must sleep. To-morrow will be a long day.”
Next day they came out of the foothills on to a high shelf of ground, under the peaks called the Spanish Ladies. By midday they reached Magdalena, which, since Fort Castor and Loa had gone, was now Escrick’s only base. They were here at a lower elevation, and in ordinary savannah, greening already and scented with the curious nut-like odour of a mountain spring. The cantonments, hidden in a fold of ground, could be recognised from afar by the wireless poles. Magdalena was still secure, and apparently unknown to the enemy, whose nearest post was a hundred miles distant. But the place was under strict discipline, and it was through two lines of sentries that they made their way into the dusty circle of huts and horse-lines.
Escrick himself was there, and he and Grayne had much to discuss, so Barbara and the Gobernador lunched alone in the General’s hut. The latter had lost his air of fatigue and bewilderment. His eyes scanned sharply every detail of the place, as though it was an environment, still unfamiliar, with which it was his business to become acquainted.
“These people are losing,” he told Barbara. “I feel it in the air. I felt it a week ago in the Courts of the Morning Just at present things are going badly for us.”
But there was neither disappointment nor elation in his tone. He spoke briskly, as if he had come to some decision. Later, when Escrick and Grayne joined them, it was he who directed the conversation.
“Speak to me frankly, General,” he said. “I am your commander-in-chief in name. I want an exact statement of the situation as you see it.”
Escrick had still his quiet, sleepy manner. His blue eyes were as placid as ever, and his voice had its soft drawl. But he looked an older man, and his brick-red face had been fined down and sharpened.
“Things aren’t so bad, sir. I would say they we going on according to plan, if that phrase hadn’t got blown upon. The loss of Loa don’t signify, and we always realised that sooner or later we’d be shoved out of the Courts of the Morning.”
“It will be the turn of this place next.”
“I think not. Lossberg hasn’t got on to the track of Magdalena. It will be Pacheco’s turn first. He must know about Pacheco.”
“Well, Pacheco be it! If he takes Pacheco, what will you do?”
“Shift somewhere else. It’s a big country, and aren’t tied down to any lines of communication.”
“But that can’t go on for ever. Where are you going get your supplies — your munitions and your food?”
“From Lossberg. We’ve been pretty lucky so far.”
“The railway? How is that working?”
“So-so. We worry it a bit, but he’s got the best part of a division on it now, and he’s building blockhouses. The Chief isn’t finding it so easy to keep it crippled.”
“And the Mines?”
“That’s what you might call the main front. We have a scrap there every second day. And of course we’re busy over the whole country. We don’t give Lossberg time to sit down and think.”
“General, answer me one question.” The Gobernador’s face and voice had a sudden authority which Barbara had never observed before. He seemed to be again the chairman residing at a council of the Gran Seco administration. “Are you certain that Lossberg is not winning?”
Escrick looked his questioner full in the face. “He ain’t winning. But, if you press me, our side ain’t winning neither.”
“Then he is winning. He has only to maintain himself and he is bound to win in the end. And that end is not very far distant. I should like to see your returns of supplies. Remember, I am a business man, and this is my subject.”
Papers were sent for, and the Gobernador pored over them, making calculations with a pencil. Then he asked for a map, and a big one was spread out for him on a table.
“You are losing,” he said at last. “If I made a graph of the position your line would be going down and Lossberg’s slowly rising. You know that without my telling you. In rations and ammunition you have begun these last weeks to give out more than you take in. That can only have one end.”
Escrick nodded. “Seems so,” he said dryly. “It was bound to happen. Our only chance was to delay its happening till we had made Lossberg think it could never happen. We were striking at his nerves, and the nerves of Olifa. But we have failed. Lossberg isn’t rattled one bit. He is really rather comfortable. He is planted at the Gran Seco city and at the Mines. He is getting up his stuff by the railway, and he is going to get it quite easily when his blockhouses are completed. He has sufficient reserve of vitality to take Loa and drive us out of the Courts of the Morning. Presently he will drive us out of Pacheco and Magdalena. He won’t get tired of the game and call on the President of Olifa to make peace. He is quite cheerful. Shall I tell you what will happen next?”
He leaned forward, till his lean face was close to Escrick’s.
“He is going to get the Mines started. At half-power or quarter-power, no doubt, but still started. He will find labour among the concentrados or he will import it. Soon there will be freight-trains running to Olifa as before. And we shall be driven back bit by bit into the mountains, getting fewer every day.”
“We’ve had mighty small losses so far,” said Escrick.
“They will come — never fear. From starvation, if not from bullets. Make no mistake, they will come. Do you know what we are now, General Escrick? A rebellion on the defensive, and that is the feeblest thing known to history.”
The Gobernador spoke with a passion that silenced his hearers. There was no exultation in his voice; rather it seemed to be bitter with reproach and disappointment.
Then Grayne spoke.
“We’re keeping our end up in one branch,” he said. “The air. Bobby Latimer got two enemy planes yesterday. We’ve got the whip hand of them there all right. We can fly anywhere we like in this darned country, and if we weren’t short of bombs we could mess up things considerable for old Lossberg.”
Then Barbara asked a question which had been on her lips since the moment she arrived. She did not expect an answer, for Sir Archie’s objective had been Pacheco and Janet’s kidnapping had naturally not been made public in the army.
“Have you heard anything of Sir Archibald Roylance?” she asked.
Escrick shook his head. “He came here five days back. I wasn’t here, but he saw Lowson, my Chief of Intelligence. He was going to General Peters and he left a message that he was flying close to the mountains. He never turned up at Pacheco, and our planes have been all over the ground and can’t find any trace of him.”
A small cry was wrung from Barbara’s lips. The Gobernador got to his feet and walked to the door. The fatigue of yesterday had returned to him and was shown in his cramped movements, but there was no weariness in his voice and eyes.
“Where is Lord Clanroyden?” he asked.
“At Pacheco. General Peters is having the heavy end just at present. Yesterday he had quite a show at the Universum.”
“Telegraph to him that I am coming. Can you send Miss Dasent and myself by air?”
“Sure. One of Captain Latimer’s men is going there this afternoon, for we’re concentrating for another try at the railway...But hadn’t you better stay here, sir? Pacheco soon won’t be too safe for civilians.”
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br /> The Gobernador smiled. “I suppose I am a civilian, but I’m not thinking about safety. I’m going to Lord Clanroyden to help him to make peace.”
Escrick whistled softly. “You won’t succeed, sir. From what you have said, peace must mean surrender, and we’re not likely to be in the mood for that. Lossberg may drive us up into the snowfields, but devil a man of us will cry ‘Kamerad!’”
The Gobernador’s smile broadened till he looked almost in cheerful. “I know, I know,” he said. “Nevertheless I hope to in make peace.”
In the late afternoon, in a world of soft airs and a warm stillness, Barbara and Castor flew over the barrens of the Tierra Caliente. Thirty miles off on their left the great mountains flamed in the setting sun, and in the twilight they saw before them the line of steep cliffs which ran at right angles to the main range and made the southern wall of the Gran Seco. A little short of it they swerved eastward into the secluded valley of Pacheco.
Sandy was sitting in his hut with his elbows on a deal table, studying by the light of two candles a paper which lay before him. An aide-de-camp brought him a message which made him rise to his feet and stare blinkingly at the door.
The Gobernador stood before him, bent a little like a man whose every limb aches with stiffness. He did not hold out his hand. “Lord Clanroyden,” he said, “I have come to take over the command with which you honoured me some time ago.”
XII
Barbara interposed. She ran forward and seized Sandy’s hand.
“Janet!” she cried. “Have you any news of Janet?”
Sandy stood holding her hands, his face a study in perplexity.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I have just had this letter from Luis. He has disappeared for the last eight days...Sit down, please, all of you. I’m very glad to see you. Tommy, get seats, and get a lamp of some kind...You’ll want food. Tell them at the mess...Here is Luis’s letter, brought by an Indian half an hour ago. I’m hanged if I know what to make of it.”