Juan Ballester was, in fact, a very remarkable person. Very few people who had dealings with him ever forgot him. There was the affair of the Opera House, for instance, and a hundred instances. 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. But from time to time Juan Ballester did magnanimous things; not from magnanimity, of which quality he was entirely devoid, but from a passion for the bran geste. He would see himself a shining figure before men’s eyes, the perfect cavalier; and the illusion would dazzle him into generosity. Accordingly, 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 Santa Paula. “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.
Ballester 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, Señor 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 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 Santa Paula.”
I stifled 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 Santa Paula in the year,” he exclaimed bitterly.
“Wait, my friend,” said Ballester; “there will be.”
And 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 Santa Paula, 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 Ballester was, no doubt, 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 Santa Paula 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 Ballester’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 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 Ballester drily.
“Yes,” cried Harry Vandeleur, and out the story tumbled.
He was very anxious to marry Olivia Calavera — daughter, by the way, of Santiago Calavera, Ballester’s Minister of the Interior — and Olivia Calavera 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 Santiago, 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 Señorita Olivia.”
“Is that so?” said Juan Ballester, 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 Ballester, “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 Santiago’s eyes. He was, besides, under a considerable obligation to Ballester. He embarked accordingly at Las Cuevas, 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 developments. But this time they were not so quick in coming.
II
Ballester, like greater and lesser men, had hi
s inconsistencies. 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 dared 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 Ballester 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 Santiago Calavera, 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 Ballester 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 with a snap, “it is going through, Señor Santiago”; 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 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 then 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.
“Señor Carlyon, it is two months since I have seen you,” she said reproachfully.
“Señorita, 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 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, Señorita.”
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. “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, Señor 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?” I asked.
She spoke in jerks.
“He came to me to-night.... He danced with me....”
“Who?” I asked.
“Juan Ballester,” said she.
I had half expected the name.
“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....”
“Yes, I see,” I replied slowly. “Having done his work, he wants his prize. He would.”
Ballester had toiled untiringly for thirteen years in both open and devious ways, and, as the consequence of his toil, he had lifted his Republic into an importance which it had never possessed before. He had succeeded because what he wanted, he wanted very much. It certainly looked as if there were considerable trouble in front of Olivia and Harry Vandeleur — especially Harry Vandeleur.
“So he wants you to marry him,” I said; and Olivia gave me one swift look and turned her head away.
“No,” she answered in a whisper. “He wants his revenge, too.”
“Revenge?” I exclaimed.
Olivia nodded her head.
“He told me that I must go up to Benandalla”; and the remark took my breath away. Benandalla was the name of a farm which Ballester owned, up in the hills two hours away from Santa Paula; and the less said about it the better. Ballester was accustomed to retreat thither after any spell of unusually arduous work; and the great feastings which went on, the babel of laughter, the noise of music and castanets and the bright lights blazing upon the quiet night till dawn had made the farm notorious. Even at this moment, I knew, it was not nearly uninhabited.
“At Benandalla ... you?” I cried; and, indeed, it seemed to me that the mere presence of Olivia must have brought discomfort into those coarse orgies, so set apart was she by her distinction. “And he tells you to go,” I continued, “as if you were his maidservant!”
Olivia clenched her small hands together and leaned upon the railings. Her eyes travelled along the river below and sought a brightness in the distant sky — the loom of the lights of Las Cuevas. For a little while, she was strengthened by thoughts of escape, and then once more she drooped.
“I am frightened,” she said, and coming from her, the whispered and childish cry filled me with consternation. It was her manner and what she left unsaid rather than her words, which alarmed me. Where I should have expected pride and a flame of high anger, I found sheer terror, and the reason of that terror she had not yet given me.
“He spoke of Harry,” she resumed. “He said that Harry must not interfere.... He used threats.”
Yes, I thought, Juan Ballester would do that. It was not the usual way of conducting a courtship; but Juan Ballester’s way was not the usual way of governing a country.
“What kind of threats?”
“Prisons,” she answered with a break in her voice.
“What?” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” she said. “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 — destroyed — here than anywhere else if you once get into prison.” From her hesitation I could guess that “destroyed” was a milder wor
d than Juan Ballester 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 month or so, the sun puts an end to your misery.”
I knew there was truth in that description. But it was not possible that Ballester could put his threat into force. It was anger now, not consternation, which filled me.
“Señorita, reflect!” I cried. “In whose garden are you standing now? The British Minister’s — and Harry Vandeleur is an Englishman. It was no more than a brutal piece of bullying by Ballester. See! I am his secretary” — and she suddenly turned round towards me with a gleam in her eyes.
“Yes,” she interrupted. “You are his secretary and Harry’s friend. Will you help us, I wonder?”
“Show me how!” said I.
“It is not Harry whom he threatens, but my father”; and she lowered her eyes from mine and was silent.
“My father”; and her answer made my protestations mere vapourings and foolishness.
The danger was real. The British Minister could hold no shield in front of Santiago Calavera, even if there were no guilt upon him for which he could be properly imprisoned. But Olivia’s extremity of terror and my knowledge of Santiago warned me that this condition was little likely to exist. I took Olivia’s hands. They clung to mine in a desperate appeal for help.
“Come, Señorita,” I said gravely. “If I am to help you, I must have the truth. What grounds had Ballester 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.
“Go on, please!” I insisted, and the pride died out of her face, and she turned in a second to pleading.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 781