University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER ONE

THROUGH good and evil report in the varying fortune
of that struggle which Don José had characterized in
the phrase, "the fate of national honesty trembles in the
balance," the Gould Concession, "Imperium in Imperio,"
had gone on working; the square mountain had
gone on pouring its treasure down the wooden shoots
to the unresting batteries of stamps; the lights of San
Tomé had twinkled night after night upon the great,
limitless shadow of the Campo; every three months
the silver escort had gone down to the sea as if neither
the war nor its consequences could ever affect the
ancient Occidental State secluded beyond its high
barrier of the Cordillera. All the fighting took place
on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated peaks
lorded over by the white dome of Higuerota and as yet
unbreached by the railway, of which only the first part,
the easy Campo part from Sulaco to the Ivie Valley at
the foot of the pass, had been laid. Neither did the
telegraph line cross the mountains yet; its poles, like
slender beacons on the plain, penetrated into the forest
fringe of the foot-hills cut by the deep avenue of the
track; and its wire ended abruptly in the construction
camp at a white deal table supporting a Morse apparatus,
in a long hut of planks with a corrugated iron
roof overshadowed by gigantic cedar trees — the quarters
of the engineer in charge of the advance section.

The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in railway
material, and with the movements of troops along
the coast. The O.S.N. Company found much occupation

for its fleet. Costaguana had no navy, and, apart
from a few coastguard cutters, there were no national
ships except a couple of old merchant steamers used as
transports.

Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick
of history, found time for an hour or so during an
afternoon in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould,
where, with a strange ignorance of the real forces at
work around him, he professed himself delighted to get
away from the strain of affairs. He did not know what
he would have done without his invaluable Nostromo,
he declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics
gave him more work — he confided to Mrs. Gould —
than he had bargained for.

Don José Avellanos had displayed in the service of the
endangered Ribiera Government an organizing activity
and an eloquence of which the echoes reached even
Europe. For, after the new loan to the Ribiera Government,
Europe had become interested in Costaguana.
The Sala of the Provincial Assembly (in the Municipal
Buildings of Sulaco), with its portraits of the Liberators
on the walls and an old flag of Cortez preserved in a
glass case above the President's chair, had heard all
these speeches — the early one containing the impassioned
declaration "Militarism is the enemy," the
famous one of the "trembling balance" delivered on
the occasion of the vote for the raising of a second
Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming Government;
and when the provinces again displayed their
old flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento's time) there
was another of those great orations, when Don José
greeted these old emblems of the war of Independence,
brought out again in the name of new Ideals. The
old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For his part
he did not wish to revive old political doctrines. They

were perishable. They died. But the doctrine of
political rectitude was immortal. The second Sulaco
regiment, to whom he was presenting this flag, was going
to show its valour in a contest for order, peace, progress;
for the establishment of national self-respect without
which — he declared with energy — "we are a reproach
and a byword amongst the powers of the world."

Don José Avellanos loved his country. He had
served it lavishly with his fortune during his diplomatic
career, and the later story of his captivity and barbarous
ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known
to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not been
a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which
marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman had
ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of political
fanaticism. The power of Supreme Government had
become in his dull mind an object of strange worship, as
if it were some sort of cruel deity. It was incarnated in
himself, and his adversaries, the Federalists, were the
supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and fear,
as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For
years he had carried about at the tail of the Army of
Pacification, all over the country, a captive band of
such atrocious criminals, who considered themselves
most unfortunate at not having been summarily executed.
It was a diminishing company of nearly naked
skeletons, loaded with irons, covered with dirt, with
vermin, with raw wounds, all men of position, of education,
of wealth, who had learned to fight amongst themselves
for scraps of rotten beef thrown to them by
soldiers, or to beg a negro cook for a drink of muddy
water in pitiful accents. Don José Avellanos, clanking
his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in
order to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation,
and cruel torture a human body can stand without

parting with the last spark of life. Sometimes interrogatories,
backed by some primitive method of torture,
were administered to them by a commission of officers
hastily assembled in a hut of sticks and branches, and
made pitiless by the fear for their own lives. A lucky
one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would
perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a
file of soldiers. Always an army chaplain — some unshaven,
dirty man, girt with a sword and with a tiny
cross embroidered in white cotton on the left breast of a
lieutenant's uniform — would follow, cigarette in the
corner of the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the
confession and give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour
of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus officially
in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational
clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad
would be heard, followed sometimes by a single finishing
shot; a little bluish cloud of smoke would float up
above the green bushes, and the Army of Pacification
would move on over the savannas, through the forests,
crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the
haciendas of the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland
towns in the fulfilment of its patriotic mission, and
leaving behind a united land wherein the evil taint of
Federalism could no longer be detected in the smoke of
burning houses and the smell of spilt blood.
Don José Avellanos had survived that time.
Perhaps, when contemptuously signifying to him his
release, the Citizen Saviour of the Country might have
thought this benighted aristocrat too broken in health
and spirit and fortune to be any longer dangerous. Or,
perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman
Bento, usually full of fanciful fears and brooding suspicions,
had sudden accesses of unreasonable self-
confidence when he perceived himself elevated on a
pinnacle of power and safety beyond the reach of mere
mortal plotters. At such times he would impulsively
command the celebration of a solemn Mass of thanksgiving,
which would be sung in great pomp in the
cathedral of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient
Archbishop of his creation. He heard it sitting in a
gilt armchair placed before the high altar, surrounded
by the civil and military heads of his Government.
The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into
the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of
mark to stay away from these manifestations of presidential
piety. Having thus acknowledged the only
power he was at all disposed to recognize as above himself,
he would scatter acts of political grace in a sardonic
wantonness of clemency. There was no other way left
now to enjoy his power but by seeing his crushed
adversaries crawl impotently into the light of day out of
the dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their harmlessness
fed his insatiable vanity, and they could always be
got hold of again. It was the rule for all the women of
their families to present thanks afterwards in a special
audience. The incarnation of that strange god, El
Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked
hat on head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter
to show their gratitude by bringing up their children in
fidelity to the democratic form of government, "which
I have established for the happiness of our country."
His front teeth having been knocked out in some accident
of his former herdsman's life, his utterance was
spluttering and indistinct. He had been working for
Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and opposition.
Let it cease now lest he should become
weary of forgiving!

Don José Avellanos had known this forgiveness.

He was broken in health and fortune deplorably

enough to present a truly gratifying spectacle to the
supreme chief of democratic institutions. He retired
to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in that province, and
she nursed him back to life out of the house of death and
captivity. When she died, their daughter, an only
child, was old enough to devote herself to "poor papa."

Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly
in England, was a tall, grave girl, with a self-possessed
manner, a wide, white forehead, a wealth of rich brown
hair, and blue eyes.

The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her
character and accomplishments. She was reputed to
be terribly learned and serious. As to pride, it was
well known that all the Corbelàns were proud, and her
mother was a Corbelàn. Don José Avellanos depended
very much upon the devotion of his beloved Antonia.
He accepted it in the benighted way of men, who,
though made in God's image, are like stone idols without
sense before the smoke of certain burnt offerings. He
was ruined in every way, but a man possessed of passion
is not a bankrupt in life. Don José Avellanos
desired passionately for his country: peace, prosperity,
and (as the end of the preface to "Fifty Years of Misrule"
has it) "an honourable place in the comity of
civilized nations." In this last phrase the Minister
Plenipotentiary, cruelly humiliated by the bad faith
of his Government towards the foreign bondholders,
stands disclosed in the patriot.

The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the
tyranny of Guzman Bento seemed to bring his desire to
the very door of opportunity. He was too old to
descend personally into the centre of the arena at Sta.
Marta. But the men who acted there sought his advice
at every step. He himself thought that he could
be most useful at a distance, in Sulaco. His name, his

connections, his former position, his experience commanded
the respect of his class. The discovery that
this man, living in dignified poverty in the Corbelàn
town residence (opposite the Casa Gould), could dispose
of material means towards the support of the
cause increased his influence. It was his open letter of
appeal that decided the candidature of Don Vincente
Ribiera for the Presidency. Another of these informal
State papers drawn up by Don José (this time in the
shape of an address from the Province) induced that
scrupulous constitutionalist to accept the extraordinary
powers conferred upon him for five years by an overwhelming
vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It was a
specific mandate to establish the prosperity of the
people on the basis of firm peace at home, and to redeem
the national credit by the satisfaction of all just claims
abroad.

On the afternoon the news of that vote had reached
Sulaco by the usual roundabout postal way through
Cayta, and up the coast by steamer. Don José, who
had been waiting for the mail in the Goulds' drawing-
room, got out of the rocking-chair, letting his hat fall
off his knees. He rubbed his silvery, short hair with
both hands, speechless with the excess of joy.

"Emilia, my soul," he had burst out, "let me embrace
you! Let me —"

Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt
have made an apt remark about the dawn of a new era;
but if Don José thought something of the kind, his
eloquence failed him on this occasion. The inspirer of
that revival of the Blanco party tottered where he
stood. Mrs. Gould moved forward quickly and, as she
offered her cheek with a smile to her old friend, managed
very cleverly to give him the support of her arm he
really needed.

Don José had recovered himself at once, but for a
time he could do no more than murmur, "Oh, you two
patriots! Oh, you two patriots!" — looking from one to
the other. Vague plans of another historical work,
wherein all the devotions to the regeneration of the
country he loved would be enshrined for the reverent
worship of posterity, flitted through his mind. The
historian who had enough elevation of soul to write of
Guzman Bento: "Yet this monster, imbrued in the
blood of his countrymen, must not be held unreservedly
to the execration of future years. It appears to be
true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it
twelve years of peace; and, absolute master of lives and
fortunes as he was, he died poor. His worst fault, perhaps,
was not his ferocity, but his ignorance;" the man
who could write thus of a cruel persecutor (the passage
occurs in his "History of Misrule") felt at the foreshadowing
of success an almost boundless affection for
his two helpers, for these two young people from over
the sea.

Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of
practical necessity, stronger than any abstract political
doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn the sword, so now,
the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung the
silver of the San Tomé into the fray. The Inglez of
Sulaco, the "Costaguana Englishman" of the third
generation, was as far from being a political intriguer as
his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler. Springing
from the instinctive uprightness of their natures
their action was reasoned. They saw an opportunity
and used the weapon to hand.

Charles Gould's position — a commanding position in
the background of that attempt to retrieve the peace
and the credit of the Republic — was very clear. At the
beginning he had had to accommodate himself to existing

circumstances of corruption so naïvely brazen as to
disarm the hate of a man courageous enough not to be
afraid of its irresponsible potency to ruin everything it
touched. It seemed to him too contemptible for hot
anger even. He made use of it with a cold, fearless
scorn, manifested rather than concealed by the forms
of stony courtesy which did away with much of the
ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps, he
suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly
illusions, but he refused to discuss the ethical view with
his wife. He trusted that, though a little disenchanted,
she would be intelligent enough to understand that his
character safeguarded the enterprise of their lives
as much or more than his policy. The extraordinary
development of the mine had put a great power into his
hands. To feel that prosperity always at the mercy of
unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him. To
Mrs. Gould it was humiliating. At any rate, it was
dangerous. In the confidential communications passing
between Charles Gould, the King of Sulaco, and the
head of the silver and steel interests far away in California,
the conviction was growing that any attempt
made by men of education and integrity ought to be
discreetly supported. "You may tell your friend
Avellanos that I think so," Mr. Holroyd had written
at the proper moment from his inviolable sanctuary
within the eleven-storey high factory of great affairs.
And shortly afterwards, with a credit opened by the
Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to the
Holroyd Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana
took a practical shape under the eye of the administrator
of the San Tomé mine. And Don José, the hereditary
friend of the Gould family, could say: "Perhaps,
my dear Carlos, I shall not have believed in vain."