The Purple Land Part 27

I have not read many books of philosophy, because when I tried to be a philosopher "happiness was always breaking in," as someone says; also because I have loved to study men rather than books; but in the little I have read there occurs a pa.s.sage I remember well, and this I shall quote as my answer to anyone who may call me an immoral person because my pa.s.sions have not always remained in a quiescent state, like hounds--to quote the simile of a South American poet--slumbering at the feet of the huntsman resting against a rock at noon. "We should regard the perturbations of the mind," says Spinoza, "not in the light of vices of human nature, but as properties just as pertinent to it as are heat, storms, thunder, and the like, to the nature of the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have fixed causes by means of which we endeavour to understand their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in seeing them aright as in knowing such things as flatter the senses." Let me have the phenomena which are inconvenient as well as the things which flatter the senses, and the chances are that my life will be a healthier and happier one than that of the person who spends his time on a cloud blushing at Nature's naughtiness.

It is often said that an ideal state--a Utopia where there is no folly, crime, or sorrow--has a singular fascination for the mind. Now, when I meet with a falsehood, I care not who the great persons who proclaim it may be, I do not try to like it or believe it or mimic the fashionable prattle of the world about it. I hate all dreams of perpetual peace, all wonderful cities of the sun, where people consume their joyful, monotonous years in mystic contemplations, or find their delight, like Buddhist monks, in gazing on the ashes of dead generations of devotees.

The state is one unnatural, unspeakably repugnant: the dreamless sleep of the grave is more tolerable to the active, healthy mind than such an existence. If Signor Gaudentio di Lucca, still keeping himself alive by means of his marvellous knowledge of the secrets of Nature, were to appear before me now on this mountain to inform me that the sacred community he resided with in Central Africa was no mere dream, and should offer to conduct me to it, I should decline to go with him. I should prefer to remain in the Banda Oriental, even though by so doing I should grow at last to be as bad as any person in it, and ready to "wade through slaughter" to the Presidential Chair. For even in my own country of England, which is not so perfect as old Peru or the Pophar's country in Central Africa, I have been long divided from Nature, and now in this Oriental country, whose political misdeeds are a scandal alike to pure England and impure Brazil, I have been reunited to her. For this reason I love her with all her faults. Here, like Santa Coloma, I will kneel down and kiss this stone, as an infant might kiss the breast that feeds it; here, fearless of dirt, like John Carrickfergus, I will thrust my hands into the loose brown soil to clasp the hands, as it were, of dear mother Nature after our long separation.

Farewell, beautiful land of sunshine and storm, of virtue and of crime; may the invaders of the future fare on your soil like those of the past and leave you in the end to your own devices; may the chivalrous instinct of Santa Coloma, the pa.s.sion of Dolores, the loving-kindness of Candelaria still live in your children to brighten their lives with romance and beauty; may the blight of our superior civilisation never fall on your wild flowers, or the yoke of our progress be laid on your herdsman--careless, graceful, music-loving as the birds--to make him like the sullen, abject peasant of the Old World!

CHAPTER XXIX

The meeting of my fellow-travellers took place next day on board the ship, where we three were the only cabin pa.s.sengers. On going down into the little saloon I found Demetria waiting for us, considerably improved in appearance by her new dress, but looking pale and anxious, for she probably found this meeting a trying one. The two women looked earnestly at each other, but Demetria, to hide her nervousness, I suppose, had framed her face in the old, impa.s.sive, almost cold expression it had worn when I first knew her, and Paquita was repelled by it; so after a somewhat lukewarm greeting they sat down and made commonplace remarks.

Two women more unlike each other in appearance, character, education, and disposition it would have been difficult to find; still, I had hoped they might be friends, and felt keenly disappointed at the result of their first meeting. After an uncomfortable interval we all rose. I was about to proceed to the deck, they to their respective cabins, when Paquita, without any warning of what was coming, suddenly burst into tears and threw her arms about Demetria's neck.

"Oh, dear Demetria, what a sad life yours has been!" she exclaimed.

That was like her, so impulsive, and with such a true instinct to make her do the right thing always! The other gladly responded to the embrace, and I hastily retreated, leaving them kissing and mingling their tears.

When I got out on deck I found that we were already on our way, sails up, and a fresh wind sending us swiftly through the dull green water.

There were five steerage pa.s.sengers, disreputable-looking fellows in _ponchos_ and slouch hats, lounging about the deck smoking; but when we got outside the harbour and the ship began to toss a little, they very soon dropped their cigars and began ignominiously creeping away out of sight of the grinning sailors. Only one remained, a grizzly-bearded, rough-looking old gaucho, who firmly kept his seat at the stern, as if determined to see the last of "The Mount," as the pretty city near the foot of Magellan's Hill is called by the English people in this region.

To satisfy myself that none of these fellows were sent in pursuit of Demetria, I asked our Italian captain who they were and how long they had been on board, and was much relieved to hear that they were fugitives--rebels probably--and had all been concealed for the past three or four days in the ship, waiting to get away from Montevideo.

Towards evening it came on very rough, the wind veering to the south and blowing half a gale, a very favourable wind, as it happened, to take us across this unlovely "Silver Sea," as the poets of the Plata insist on calling it, with its villainous, brick-red, chopping waves, so disagreeable to bad sailors. Paquita and Demetria suffered agonies, so that I was obliged to keep with them a good deal. I very imprudently told them not to be alarmed, that it was nothing--_only sea-sickness_--and I verily believe they both hated me with all their hearts for a little while in consequence. Fortunately I had antic.i.p.ated these harrowing scenes, and had provided a bottle of champagne for the occasion; and after I had consumed two or three gla.s.sfuls to encourage them, showing how easy this kind of medicine is to take, I prevailed on them to drink the remainder. At length, about ten o'clock in the evening, they began to suspect that their malady was not going to prove fatal, and, seeing them so much better, I went up to get some fresh air.

There at the stern still sat the stoical old gaucho, looking extremely miserable.

"Good evening, old comrade," said I; "will you smoke a cigar?"

"Young master, you seem to have a good heart," he returned, shaking his head at the proffered cigar, "do, for G.o.d's sake, get me a little rum.

I am dying for something to warm my inside and stop my head from going round like a top, but nothing can I get from these jabbering foreign brutes on board."

"Yes, why not, my old friend," said I, and, going to the master of the boat, I succeeded in getting a pint of rum in a bottle.

The old fellow clutched it with eager delight and took a long draught.

"Ah!" he said, patting first the bottle, then his stomach, "this puts new life into a man! Will this voyage never end, master? When I am on horseback I can forget that I am old, but these cursed waves remind me that I have lived many years."

I lit my cigar and sat down to have a talk with him.

"Ah, with you foreigners it is just the same--land or water," he continued. "You can even smoke--what a calm head and quiet stomach you must have! But what puzzles me is this, senor; how you, a foreigner, come to be travelling with native women. Now, there is that beautiful young senora with the violet eyes, who can she be?"

"She is my wife, old man," said I, laughing, a little amused at his curiosity.

"Ah, you are married then--so young? She is beautiful, graceful, well educated, the daughter of wealthy parents, no doubt, but frail, frail, senor; and some day, not a very distant day--but why should I predict sorrow to a gay heart? Only her face, senor, is strange to me; it does not recall the features of any Oriental family I know."

"That is easily explained," I said, surprised at his shrewdness, "she is an Argentine, not an Oriental."

"Ah, that explains it," he said, taking another long pull at the bottle.

"As for the other senora with you, I need not ask you who _she_ is."

"Why, who is she?" I returned.

"A Peralta, if there ever was one," he returned confidently.

His reply disturbed me not a little, for, after all my precautions, this old man had perhaps been sent to follow Demetria.

"Yes," he continued, with an evident pride in his knowledge of families and faces which tended to allay my suspicions; "a Peralta and not a Madariaga, nor a Sanchez, nor a Zelaya, nor an Ibarra. Do I not know a Peralta when I see one?" And here he laughed scornfully at the absurdity of such an idea.

"Tell me," I said, "how do you know a Peralta?"

"The question!" he exclaimed. "You are a Frenchman or a German from over the sea, and do not understand these things. Have I borne arms forty years in my country's service not to know a Peralta! On earth they are with me; if I go to Heaven I meet them there, and in h.e.l.l I see them; for when have I charged into the hottest of the fight and have not found a Peralta there before me? But I am speaking of the past, senor; for now I am also like one that has been left on the field forgotten--left for the vultures and foxes. You will no longer find them walking on the earth; only where men have rushed together sword in hand you will find their bones. Ah, friend!" And here, overcome with sad memories, the ancient warrior took another drink from his bottle.

"They cannot all be dead," said I, "if, as you imagine, the senora travelling with me is a Peralta."

"As I imagine!" he repeated scornfully. "Do I not know what I am talking about, young sir? They are dead, I tell you--dead as the past, dead as Oriental independence and honour. Did I not ride into the fight at Gil de los Medanos with the last of the Peraltas, Calixto, when he received his baptism of blood? Fifteen years old, senor, only fifteen, when he galloped into the fight, for he had the light heart, the brave spirit, and the hand swift to strike of a Peralta. And after the fight our colonel, Santa Coloma, who was killed the other day at San Paulo, embraced the boy before all the troops. He is dead, senor, and with Calixto died the house of Peralta."

"You knew Santa Coloma, then?" I said. "But you are mistaken, he was not killed at San Paulo, he made his escape."

"So they say--the ignorant ones," he returned. "But he is dead, for he loved his country, and all who are of that mind are slain. How should he escape?"

"I tell you he is not dead," I repeated, vexed at his stubborn persistence. "I also knew him, old man, and was with him at San Paulo."

He looked at me for a long time, and then took another swig from his bottle.

"Senor, this is not a thing I love joking about," said he. "Let us talk of other things. What I want to know is, what is Calixto's sister doing here? Why has she left her country?"

Receiving no reply to this question, he went on: "Has she not got property? Yes, a large _estancia_, impoverished, ruined, if you like, but still a very large tract of land. When your enemies do not fear you, then they cease to persecute. A broken old man, bereft of reason--surely they would not trouble him! No, no, she is leaving her country for other reasons. Yes, there is some private plot against her; some design, perhaps, to carry her off, or even to destroy her and get possession of her property. Naturally, in such a case, she would fly for protection to Buenos Ayres, where there is one with some of her blood in his veins able to protect her person and her property."

I was astonished to hear him, but his last words were a mystery to me.

"There is no one in Buenos Ayres to protect her," I said; "I only will be there as I am here to shield her, and if, as you think, she has an enemy, he must reckon with me--one who, like that Calixto you speak of, has a hand quick to strike."

"There spoke the heart of a Blanco!" he exclaimed, clutching my arm, and then, the boat giving a lurch at that moment, almost dragging me down in his efforts to steady himself. After another sip of rum he went on: "But who are you, young sir, if that is not an impertinent question? Do you possess money, influence, powerful friends, that you take upon yourself the care of this woman? Is it in your power to baffle and crush her enemy or enemies, to protect not only her person, but her property, which, in her absence, will become the prey of robbers?"

"And who are you, old man?" I returned, unable to give a satisfactory answer to one of his searching questions, "and why do you ask me these things? And who is this powerful person you speak of in Buenos Ayres with some of her blood in his veins, but of whose existence she is ignorant?"

He shook his head silently, then deliberately proceeded to take out and light a cigarette. He smoked with a placid enjoyment which made me think that his refusal of my cigar and his bitter complaints about the effects of the ship's tossing on him had merely been to get the bottle of rum out of me. He was evidently a veteran in more senses than one, and now, finding that I would tell him no more secrets, he refused to answer any questions. Fearing that I had imprudently told him too much already, I finally left him and retired to my bunk.

Next morning we arrived at Buenos Ayres, and cast anchor about two miles from sh.o.r.e, for that was as near the land as we could get. Presently we were boarded by a Custom House officer, and for some time longer I was engaged in getting out our luggage and in bargaining with the captain to put us on sh.o.r.e. When I had completed these arrangements I was very much surprised to see the cunning old soldier I had talked with the evening before sitting in the Custom House boat, which was just putting off from the side. Demetria had been looking on when the old fellow had left the ship, and she now came to me looking very excited.

"Richard," she said, "did you notice that man who was a pa.s.senger with us and who has just gone off in the boat? It is Santa Coloma."

"Oh, absurd!" I exclaimed. "I talked with that old man last night for an hour--an old grey-bearded gaucho, and no more like Santa Coloma than that sailor."

"I know I am right," she returned. "The General has visited my father at the _estancia_ and I know him well. He is disguised now and has made himself look like a peasant, but when he went over the side into the boat he looked full into my face; I knew him and started, then he smiled, for he saw that I had recognised him."

The very fact that this common-looking old man had gone on sh.o.r.e in the Custom House boat proved that he was a person of consequence in disguise, and I could not doubt that Demetria was right. I felt excessively annoyed at myself for having failed to penetrate his disguise; for something of the old Marcos Marco style of speaking might very well have revealed his ident.i.ty if I had only had my wits about me.

I was also very much concerned on Demetria's account, for it seemed that I had missed finding out something for her which would have been to her advantage to know. I was ashamed to tell her of that conversation about a relation in Buenos Ayres, but secretly determined to try and find Santa Coloma to get him to tell me what he knew.