Chapter 4 of 11 · 8278 words · ~41 min read

Part 4

before, but now it seemed as though he could not do enough for the comfort and safety of his visitors’ journey back to their ship. “Nothing, I have been told, could have presented a greater contrast to his late violence or the habitual taciturn reserve of his manner. Like a man elated beyond measure by an unexpected happiness, he overflowed with good-will, amiability, and attentions. He embraced the officers like brothers, almost with tears in his eyes. The released prisoners were presented each with a piece of gold. At the last moment, suddenly, he declared he could do no less than restore to the masters of the merchant vessels all their private property. This unexpected generosity caused some delay in the departure of the party, and their first march was very short. “Late in the evening Gaspar Ruiz rode up with an escort, to their camp fires, bringing along with him a mule loaded with cases of wine. He had come, he said, to drink a stirrup cup with his English friends, whom he would never see again. He was mellow and joyous in his temper. He told stories of his own exploits, laughed like a boy, borrowed a guitar from the Englishmen’s chief muleteer, and sitting cross-legged on his superfine poncho spread before the glow of the embers, sang a guasso love-song in a tender voice. Then his head dropped on his breast, his hands fell to the ground; the guitar rolled off his knees—and a great hush fell over the camp after the love-song of the implacable partisan who had made so many of our people weep for destroyed homes and for loves cut short. “Before anybody could make a sound he sprang up from the ground and called for his horse. “‘Adios, my friends!’ he cried. ‘Go with God. I love you. And tell them well in Santiago that between Gaspar Ruiz, colonel of the King of Spain, and the republican carrion-crows of Chile there is war to the last breath—war! war! war!’ “With a great yell of ‘War! war! war!’ which his escort took up, they rode away, and the sound of hoofs and of voices died out in the distance between the slopes of the hills. “The two young English officers were convinced that Ruiz was mad. How do you say that?—tile loose—eh? But the doctor, an observant Scotsman with much shrewdness and philosophy in his character, told me that it was a very curious case of possession. I met him many years afterwards, but he remembered the experience very well. He told me, too, that in his opinion that woman did not lead Gaspar Ruiz into the practice of sanguinary treachery by direct persuasion, but by the subtle way of awakening and keeping alive in his simple mind a burning sense of an irreparable wrong. Maybe, maybe. But I would say that she poured half of her vengeful soul into the strong clay of that man, as you may pour intoxication, madness, poison into an empty cup. “If he wanted war he got it in earnest when our victorious army began to return from Peru. Systematic operations were planned against this blot on the honour and prosperity of our hardly won independence. General Robles commanded, with his well-known ruthless severity. Savage reprisals were exercised on both sides and no quarter was given in the field. Having won my promotion in the Peru campaign, I was a captain on the staff. Gaspar Ruiz found himself hard pressed; at the same time we heard by means of a fugitive priest who had been carried off from his village presbytery and galloped eighty miles into the hills to perform the christening ceremony, that a daughter was born to them. To celebrate the event, I suppose, Ruiz executed one or two brilliant forays clear away at the rear of our forces, and defeated the detachments sent out to cut off his retreat. General Robles nearly had a stroke of apoplexy from rage. He found another cause of insomnia than the bites of mosquitoes; but against this one, senores, tumblers of raw brandy had no more effect than so much water. He took to railing and storming at me about my strong man. And from our impatience to end this inglorious campaign I am afraid that all we young officers became reckless and apt to take undue risks on service. “Nevertheless, slowly, inch by inch as it were, our columns were closing upon Gaspar Ruiz, though he had managed to raise all the Araucanian nation of wild Indians against us. Then a year or more later our Government became aware through its agents and spies that he had actually entered into alliance with Carreras, the so-called dictator of the so-called republic of Mendoza, on the other side of the mountains. Whether Gaspar Ruiz had a deep political intention, or whether he wished only to secure a safe retreat for his wife and child while he pursued remorselessly against us his war of surprises and massacres, I cannot tell. The alliance, however, was a fact. Defeated in his attempt to check our advance from the sea, he retreated with his usual swiftness, and preparing for another hard and hazardous tussle, began by sending his wife with the little girl across the Pequena range of mountains, on the frontier of Mendoza.” XI “Now Carreras, under the guise of politics and liberalism, was a scoundrel of the deepest dye, and the unhappy state of Mendoza was the prey of thieves, robbers, traitors, and murderers, who formed his party. He was under a noble exterior a man without heart, pity, honour, or conscience. He aspired to nothing but tyranny, and though he would have made use of Gaspar Ruiz for his nefarious designs, yet he soon became aware that to propitiate the Chilian Government would answer his purpose better. I blush to say that he made proposals to our Government to deliver up on certain conditions the wife and child of the man who had trusted to his honour, and that this offer was accepted. “While on her way to Mendoza over the Pequena Pass she was betrayed by her escort of Carreras’ men, and given up to the officer in command of a Chilian fort on the upland at the foot of the main Cordillera range. This atrocious transaction might have cost me dear, for as a matter of fact I was a prisoner in Gaspar Ruiz’ camp when he received the news. I had been captured during a reconnaissance, my escort of a few troopers being speared by the Indians of his bodyguard. I was saved from the same fate because he recognized my features just in time. No doubt my friends thought I was dead, and I would not have given much for my life at any time. But the strong man treated me very well, because, he said, I had always believed in his innocence and had tried to serve him when he was a victim of injustice. “‘And now,’ was his speech to me, ‘you shall see that I always speak the truth. You are safe.’ “I did not think I was very safe when I was called up to go to him one night. He paced up and down like a wild beast, exclaiming, ‘Betrayed! Betrayed!’ “He walked up to me clenching his fists. ‘I could cut your throat.’ “‘Will that give your wife back to you?’ I said as quietly as I could. “‘And the child!’ he yelled out, as if mad. He fell into a chair and laughed in a frightful, boisterous manner. ‘Oh, no, you are safe.’ “I assured him that his wife’s life was safe, too; but I did not say what I was convinced of—that he would never see her again. He wanted war to the death, and the war could only end with his death. “He gave me a strange, inexplicable look, and sat muttering blankly, ‘In their hands. In their hands.’ “I kept as still as a mouse before a cat. “Suddenly he jumped up. ‘What am I doing here?’ he cried; and opening the door, he yelled out orders to saddle and mount. ‘What is it?’ he stammered, coming up to me. ‘The Pequena fort; a fort of palisades! Nothing. I would get her back if she were hidden in the very heart of the mountain.’ He amazed me by adding, with an effort: ‘I carried her off in my two arms while the earth trembled. And the child at least is mine. She at least is mine!’ “Those were bizarre words; but I had no time for wonder. “‘You shall go with me,’ he said, violently. ‘I may want to parley, and any other messenger from Ruiz, the outlaw, would have his throat cut.’ “This was true enough. Between him and the rest of incensed mankind there could be no communication, according to the customs of honourable warfare. “In less than half an hour we were in the saddle, flying wildly through the night. He had only an escort of twenty men at his quarters, but would not wait for more. He sent, however, messengers to Peneleo, the Indian chief then ranging in the foothills, directing him to bring his warriors to the uplands and meet him at the lake called the Eye of Water, near whose shores the frontier fort of Pequena was built. “We crossed the lowlands with that untired rapidity of movement which had made Gaspar Ruiz’ raids so famous. We followed the lower valleys up to their precipitous heads. The ride was not without its dangers. A cornice road on a perpendicular wall of basalt wound itself around a buttressing rock, and at last we emerged from the gloom of a deep gorge upon the upland of Pequena. “It was a plain of green wiry grass and thin flowering bushes; but high above our heads patches of snow hung in the folds and crevices of the great walls of rock. The little lake was as round as a staring eye. The garrison of the fort were just driving in their small herd of cattle when we appeared. Then the great wooden gates swung to, and that four-square enclosure of broad blackened stakes pointed at the top and barely hiding the grass roofs of the huts inside seemed deserted, empty, without a single soul. “But when summoned to surrender, by a man who at Gaspar Ruiz’ order rode fearlessly forward those inside answered by a volley which rolled him and his horse over. I heard Ruiz by my side grind his teeth. ‘It does not matter,’ he said. ‘Now you go.’ “Torn and faded as its rags were, the vestiges of my uniform were recognized, and I was allowed to approach within speaking distance; and then I had to wait, because a voice clamouring through a loophole with joy and astonishment would not allow me to place a word. It was the voice of Major Pajol, an old friend. He, like my other comrades, had thought me killed a long time ago. “‘Put spurs to your horse, man!’ he yelled, in the greatest excitement; ‘we will swing the gate open for you.’ “I let the reins fall out of my hand and shook my head. ‘I am on my honour,’ I cried. “‘To him!’ he shouted, with infinite disgust. “‘He promises you your life.’ “‘Our life is our own. And do you, Santierra, advise us to surrender to that rastrero?’ “‘No!’ I shouted. ‘But he wants his wife and child, and he can cut you off from water.’ “‘Then she would be the first to suffer. You may tell him that. Look here—this is all nonsense: we shall dash out and capture you.’ “‘You shall not catch me alive,’ I said, firmly. “‘Imbecile!’ “‘For God’s sake,’ I continued, hastily, ‘do not open the gate.’ And I pointed at the multitude of Peneleo’s Indians who covered the shores of the lake. “I had never seen so many of these savages together. Their lances seemed as numerous as stalks of grass. Their hoarse voices made a vast, inarticulate sound like the murmur of the sea. “My friend Pajol was swearing to himself. ‘Well, then—go to the devil!’ he shouted, exasperated. But as I swung round he repented, for I heard him say hurriedly, ‘Shoot the fool’s horse before he gets away.’ “He had good marksmen. Two shots rang out, and in the very act of turning my horse staggered, fell and lay still as if struck by lightning. I had my feet out of the stirrups and rolled clear of him; but I did not attempt to rise. Neither dared they rush out to drag me in. “The masses of Indians had begun to move upon the fort. They rode up in squadrons, trailing their long chusos; then dismounted out of musket-shot, and, throwing off their fur mantles, advanced naked to the attack, stamping their feet and shouting in cadence. A sheet of flame ran three times along the face of the fort without checking their steady march. They crowded right up to the very stakes, flourishing their broad knives. But this palisade was not fastened together with hide lashings in the usual way, but with long iron nails, which they could not cut. Dismayed at the failure of their usual method of forcing an entrance, the heathen, who had marched so steadily against the musketry fire, broke and fled under the volleys of the besieged. “Directly they had passed me on their advance I got up and rejoined Gaspar Ruiz on a low ridge which jutted out upon the plain. The musketry of his own men had covered the attack, but now at a sign from him a trumpet sounded the ‘Cease fire.’ Together we looked in silence at the hopeless rout of the savages. “‘It must be a siege, then,’ he muttered. And I detected him wringing his hands stealthily. “But what sort of siege could it be? Without any need for me to repeat my friend Pajol’s message, he dared not cut the water off from the besieged. They had plenty of meat. And, indeed, if they had been short he would have been too anxious to send food into the stockade had he been able. But, as a matter of fact, it was we on the plain who were beginning to feel the pinch of hunger. “Peneleo, the Indian chief, sat by our fire folded in his ample mantle of guanaco skins. He was an athletic savage, with an enormous square shock head of hair resembling a straw beehive in shape and size, and with grave, surly, much-lined features. In his broken Spanish he repeated, growling like a bad-tempered wild beast, that if an opening ever so small were made in the stockade his men would march in and get the senora—not otherwise. “Gaspar Ruiz, sitting opposite him, kept his eyes fixed on the fort night and day as it were, in awful silence and immobility. Meantime, by runners from the lowlands that arrived nearly every day, we heard of the defeat of one of his lieutenants in the Maipu valley. Scouts sent afar brought news of a column of infantry advancing through distant passes to the relief of the fort. They were slow, but we could trace their toilful progress up the lower valleys. I wondered why Ruiz did not march to attack and destroy this threatening force, in some wild gorge fit for an ambuscade, in accordance with his genius for guerilla warfare. But his genius seemed to have abandoned him to his despair. “It was obvious to me that he could not tear himself away from the sight of the fort. I protest to you, senores, that I was moved almost to pity by the sight of this powerless strong man sitting on the ridge, indifferent to sun, to rain, to cold, to wind; with his hands clasped round his legs and his chin resting on his knees, gazing—gazing—gazing. “And the fort he kept his eyes fastened on was as still and silent as himself. The garrison gave no sign of life. They did not even answer the desultory fire directed at the loopholes. “One night, as I strolled past him, he, without changing his attitude, spoke to me unexpectedly. ‘I have sent for a gun,’ he said. ‘I shall have time to get her back and retreat before your Robles manages to crawl up here.’ “He had sent for a gun to the plains. “It was long in coming, but at last it came. It was a seven-pounder field gun. Dismounted and lashed crosswise to two long poles, it had been carried up the narrow paths between two mules with ease. His wild cry of exultation at daybreak when he saw the gun escort emerge from the valley rings in my ears now. “But, senores, I have no words to depict his amazement, his fury, his despair and distraction, when he heard that the animal loaded with the gun-carriage had, during the last night march, somehow or other tumbled down a precipice. He broke into menaces of death and torture against the escort. I kept out of his way all that day, lying behind some bushes, and wondering what he would do now. Retreat was left for him, but he could not retreat. “I saw below me his artillerist, Jorge, an old Spanish soldier, building up a sort of structure with heaped-up saddles. The gun, ready loaded, was lifted on to that, but in the act of firing the whole thing collapsed and the shot flew high above the stockade. “Nothing more was attempted. One of the ammunition mules had been lost, too, and they had no more than six shots to fire; ample enough to batter down the gate providing the gun was well laid. This was impossible without it being properly mounted. There was no time nor means to construct a carriage. Already every moment I expected to hear Robles’ bugle-calls echo amongst the crags. “Peneleo, wandering about uneasily, draped in his skins, sat down for a moment near me growling his usual tale. “‘Make an entrada—a hole. If make a hole, bueno. If not make a hole, then vamos—we must go away.’ “After sunset I observed with surprise the Indians making preparations as if for another assault. Their lines stood ranged in the shadows of the mountains. On the plain in front of the fort gate I saw a group of men swaying about in the same place. “I walked down the ridge disregarded. The moonlight in the clear air of the uplands was bright as day, but the intense shadows confused my sight, and I could not make out what they were doing. I heard the voice of Jorge, the artillerist, say in a queer, doubtful tone, ‘It is loaded, senor.’ “Then another voice in that group pronounced firmly the words, ‘Bring the riata here.’ It was the voice of Gaspar Ruiz. “A silence fell, in which the popping shots of the besieged garrison rang out sharply. They, too, had observed the group. But the distance was too great and in the spatter of spent musket-balls cutting up the ground, the group opened, closed, swayed, giving me a glimpse of busy stooping figures in its midst. I drew nearer, doubting whether this was a weird vision, a suggestive and insensate dream. “A strangely stifled voice commanded, ‘Haul the hitches tighter.’ “‘Si, senor,’ several other voices answered in tones of awed alacrity. “Then the stifled voice said: ‘Like this. I must be free to breathe.’ “Then there was a concerned noise of many men together. ‘Help him up, hombres. Steady! Under the other arm.’ “That deadened voice ordered: ‘Bueno! Stand away from me, men.’ “I pushed my way through the recoiling circle, and heard once more that same oppressed voice saying earnestly: ‘Forget that I am a living man, Jorge. Forget me altogether, and think of what you have to do.’ “‘Be without fear, senor. You are nothing to me but a gun-carriage, and I shall not waste a shot.’ “I heard the spluttering of a port-fire, and smelt the saltpetre of the match. I saw suddenly before me a nondescript shape on all fours like a beast, but with a man’s head drooping below a tubular projection over the nape of the neck, and the gleam of a rounded mass of bronze on its back. “In front of a silent semicircle of men it squatted alone, with Jorge behind it and a trumpeter motionless, his trumpet in his hand, by its side. “Jorge, bent double, muttered, port-fire in hand: ‘An inch to the left, senor. Too much. So. Now, if you let yourself down a little by letting your elbows bend, I will . . .’ “He leaped aside, lowering his port-fire, and a burst of flame darted out of the muzzle of the gun lashed on the man’s back. “Then Gaspar Ruiz lowered himself slowly. ‘Good shot?’ he asked. “‘Full on, senor.’ “‘Then load again.’ “He lay there before me on his breast under the darkly glittering bronze of his monstrous burden, such as no love or strength of man had ever had to bear in the lamentable history of the world. His arms were spread out, and he resembled a prostrate penitent on the moonlit ground. “Again I saw him raised to his hands and knees and the men stand away from him, and old Jorge stoop glancing along the gun. “‘Left a little. Right an inch. Por Dios, senor, stop this trembling. Where is your strength?’ “The old gunner’s voice was cracked with emotion. He stepped aside, and quick as lightning brought the spark to the touch-hole. “‘Excellent!’ he cried, tearfully; but Gaspar Ruiz lay for a long time silent, flattened on the ground. “‘I am tired,’ he murmured at last. ‘Will another shot do it?’ “‘Without doubt,’ said Jorge, bending down to his ear. “‘Then—load,’ I heard him utter distinctly. ‘Trumpeter!’ “‘I am here, senor, ready for your word.’ “‘Blow a blast at this word that shall be heard from one end of Chile to the other,’ he said, in an extraordinarily strong voice. ‘And you others stand ready to cut this accursed riata, for then will be the time for me to lead you in your rush. Now raise me up, and you, Jorge—be quick with your aim.’ “The rattle of musketry from the fort nearly drowned his voice. The palisade was wreathed in smoke and flame. “‘Exert your force forward against the recoil, mi amo,’ said the old gunner, shakily. ‘Dig your fingers into the ground. So. Now!’ “A cry of exultation escaped him after the shot. The trumpeter raised his trumpet nearly to his lips and waited. But no word came from the prostrate man. I fell on one knee, and heard all he had to say then. “‘Something broken,’ he whispered, lifting his head a little, and turning his eyes towards me in his hopelessly crushed attitude. “‘The gate hangs only by the splinters,’ yelled Jorge. “Gaspar Ruiz tried to speak, but his voice died out in his throat, and I helped to roll the gun off his broken back. He was insensible. “I kept my lips shut, of course. The signal for the Indians to attack was never given. Instead, the bugle-calls of the relieving force for which my ears had thirsted so long, burst out, terrifying like the call of the Last Day to our surprised enemies. “A tornado, senores, a real hurricane of stampeded men, wild horses, mounted Indians, swept over me as I cowered on the ground by the side of Gaspar Ruiz, still stretched out on his face in the shape of a cross. Peneleo, galloping for life, jabbed at me with his long chuso in passing—for the sake of old acquaintance, I suppose. How I escaped the flying lead is more difficult to explain. Venturing to rise on my knees too soon some soldiers of the 17th Taltal regiment, in their hurry to get at something alive, nearly bayoneted me on the spot. They looked very disappointed, too, when, some officers galloping up drove them away with the flat of their swords. “It was General Robles with his staff. He wanted badly to make some prisoners. He, too, seemed disappointed for a moment. ‘What! Is it you?’ he cried. But he dismounted at once to embrace me, for he was an old friend of my family. I pointed to the body at our feet, and said only these two words: “‘Gaspar Ruiz.’ “He threw his arms up in astonishment. “‘Aha! Your strong man! Always to the last with your strong man. No matter. He saved our lives when the earth trembled enough to make the bravest faint with fear. I was frightened out of my wits. But he—no! Que guape! Where’s the hero who got the best of him? ha! ha! ha! What killed him, chico?’ “‘His own strength, General,’ I answered.” XII “But Gaspar Ruiz breathed yet. I had him carried in his poncho under the shelter of some bushes on the very ridge from which he had been gazing so fixedly at the fort while unseen death was hovering already over his head. “Our troops had bivouacked round the fort. Towards daybreak I was not surprised to hear that I was designated to command the escort of a prisoner who was to be sent down at once to Santiago. Of course the prisoner was Gaspar Ruiz’ wife. “‘I have named you out of regard for your feelings,’ General Robles remarked. ‘Though the woman really ought to be shot for all the harm she has done to the Republic.’ “And as I made a movement of shocked protest, he continued: “‘Now he is as well as dead, she is of no importance. Nobody will know what to do with her. However, the Government wants her.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose he must have buried large quantities of his loot in places that she alone knows of.’ “At dawn I saw her coming up the ridge, guarded by two soldiers, and carrying her child on her arm. “I walked to meet her. “‘Is he living yet?’ she asked, confronting me with that white, impassive face he used to look at in an adoring way. “I bent my head, and led her round a clump of bushes without a word. His eyes were open. He breathed with difficulty, and uttered her name with a great effort. “‘Erminia!’ “She knelt at his head. The little girl, unconscious of him, and with her big eyes looking about, began to chatter suddenly, in a joyous, thin voice. She pointed a tiny finger at the rosy glow of sunrise behind the black shapes of the peaks. And while that child-talk, incomprehensible and sweet to the ear, lasted, those two, the dying man and the kneeling woman, remained silent, looking into each other’s eyes, listening to the frail sound. Then the prattle stopped. The child laid its head against its mother’s breast and was still. “‘It was for you,’ he began. ‘Forgive.’ His voice failed him. Presently I heard a mutter and caught the pitiful words: ‘Not strong enough.’ “She looked at him with an extraordinary intensity. He tried to smile, and in a humble tone, ‘Forgive me,’ he repeated. ‘Leaving you . . .’ “She bent down, dry-eyed and in a steady voice: ‘On all the earth I have loved nothing but you, Gaspar,’ she said. “His head made a movement. His eyes revived. ‘At last!’ he sighed out. Then, anxiously, ‘But is this true . . . is this true?’ “‘As true as that there is no mercy and justice in this world,’ she answered him, passionately. She stooped over his face. He tried to raise his head, but it fell back, and when she kissed his lips he was already dead. His glazed eyes stared at the sky, on which pink clouds floated very high. But I noticed the eyelids of the child, pressed to its mother’s breast, droop and close slowly. She had gone to sleep. “The widow of Gaspar Ruiz, the strong man, allowed me to lead her away without shedding a tear. “For travelling we had arranged for her a sidesaddle very much like a chair, with a board swung beneath to rest her feet on. And the first day she rode without uttering a word, and hardly for one moment turning her eyes away from the little girl, whom she held on her knees. At our first camp I saw her during the night walking about, rocking the child in her arms and gazing down at it by the light of the moon. After we had started on our second day’s march she asked me how soon we should come to the first village of the inhabited country. “I said we should be there about noon. “‘And will there be women there?’ she inquired. “I told her that it was a large village. ‘There will be men and women there, senora,’ I said, ‘whose hearts shall be made glad by the news that all the unrest and war is over now.’ “‘Yes, it is all over now,’ she repeated. Then, after a time: ‘Senor officer, what will your Government do with me?’ “‘I do not know, senora,’ I said. ‘They will treat you well, no doubt. We republicans are not savages and take no vengeance on women.’ “She gave me a look at the word ‘republicans’ which I imagined full of undying hate. But an hour or so afterwards, as we drew up to let the baggage mules go first along a narrow path skirting a precipice, she looked at me with such a white, troubled face that I felt a great pity for her. “‘Senor officer,’ she said, ‘I am weak, I tremble. It is an insensate fear.’ And indeed her lips did tremble while she tried to smile, glancing at the beginning of the narrow path which was not so dangerous after all. ‘I am afraid I shall drop the child. Gaspar saved your life, you remember. . . . Take her from me.’ “I took the child out of her extended arms. ‘Shut your eyes, senora, and trust to your mule,’ I recommended. “She did so, and with her pallor and her wasted, thin face she looked deathlike. At a turn of the path where a great crag of purple porphyry closes the view of the lowlands, I saw her open her eyes. I rode just behind her holding the little girl with my right arm. ‘The child is all right,’ I cried encouragingly. “‘Yes,’ she answered, faintly; and then, to my intense terror, I saw her stand up on the foot-rest, staring horribly, and throw herself forward into the chasm on our right. “I cannot describe to you the sudden and abject fear that came over me at that dreadful sight. It was a dread of the abyss, the dread of the crags which seemed to nod upon me. My head swam. I pressed the child to my side and sat my horse as still as a statue. I was speechless and cold all over. Her mule staggered, sidling close to the rock, and then went on. My horse only pricked up his ears with a slight snort. My heart stood still, and from the depths of the precipice the stones rattling in the bed of the furious stream made me almost insane with their sound. “Next moment we were round the turn and on a broad and grassy slope. And then I yelled. My men came running back to me in great alarm. It seems that at first I did nothing but shout, ‘She has given the child into my hands! She has given the child into my hands!’ The escort thought I had gone mad.” General Santierra ceased and got up from the table. “And that is all, senores,” he concluded, with a courteous glance at his rising guests. “But what became of the child. General?” we asked. “Ah, the child, the child.” He walked to one of the windows opening on his beautiful garden, the refuge of his old days. Its fame was great in the land. Keeping us back with a raised arm, he called out, “Erminia, Erminia!” and waited. Then his cautioning arm dropped, and we crowded to the windows. From a clump of trees a woman had come upon the broad walk bordered with flowers. We could hear the rustle of her starched petticoats and observed the ample spread of her old-fashioned black silk skirt. She looked up, and seeing all these eyes staring at her stopped, frowned, smiled, shook her finger at the General, who was laughing boisterously, and drawing the black lace on her head so as to partly conceal her haughty profile, passed out of our sight, walking with stiff dignity. “You have beheld the guardian angel of the old man—and her to whom you owe all that is seemly and comfortable in my hospitality. Somehow, senores, though the flame of love has been kindled early in my breast, I have never married. And because of that perhaps the sparks of the sacred fire are not yet extinct here.” He struck his broad chest. “Still alive, still alive,” he said, with serio-comic emphasis. “But I shall not marry now. She is General Santierra’s adopted daughter and heiress.” One of our fellow-guests, a young naval officer, described her afterwards as a “short, stout, old girl of forty or thereabouts.” We had all noticed that her hair was turning grey, and that she had very fine black eyes. “And,” General Santierra continued, “neither would she ever hear of marrying any one. A real calamity! Good, patient, devoted to the old man. A simple soul. But I would not advise any of you to ask for her hand, for if she took yours into hers it would be only to crush your bones. Ah! she does not jest on that subject. And she is the own daughter of her father, the strong man who perished through his own strength: the strength of his body, of his simplicity—of his love!” <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">  </a> <div style="height: 4em;"> </div> <h2> THE INFORMER </h2> <h3> AN IRONIC TALE </h3> Mr. X came to me, preceded by a letter of introduction from a good friend of mine in Paris, specifically to see my collection of Chinese bronzes and porcelain. “My friend in Paris is a collector, too. He collects neither porcelain, nor bronzes, nor pictures, nor medals, nor stamps, nor anything that could be profitably dispersed under an auctioneer’s hammer. He would reject, with genuine surprise, the name of a collector. Nevertheless, that’s what he is by temperament. He collects acquaintances. It is delicate work. He brings to it the patience, the passion, the determination of a true collector of curiosities. His collection does not contain any royal personages. I don’t think he considers them sufficiently rare and interesting; but, with that exception, he has met with and talked to everyone worth knowing on any conceivable ground. He observes them, listens to them, penetrates them, measures them, and puts the memory away in the galleries of his mind. He has schemed, plotted, and travelled all over Europe in order to add to his collection of distinguished personal acquaintances. “As he is wealthy, well connected, and unprejudiced, his collection is pretty complete, including objects (or should I say subjects?) whose value is unappreciated by the vulgar, and often unknown to popular fame. Of trevolte of modern times. The world knows him as a revolutionary writer whose savage irony has laid bare the rottenness of the most respectable institutions. He has scalped every venerated head, and has mangled at the stake of his wit every received opinion and every recognized principle of conduct and policy. Who does not remember his flaming red revolutionary pamphlets? Their sudden swarmings used to overwhelm the powers of every Continental police like a plague of crimson gadflies. But this extreme writer has been also the active inspirer of secret societies, the mysterious unknown Number One of desperate conspiracies suspected and unsuspected, matured or baffled. And the world at large has never had an inkling of that fact! This accounts for him going about amongst us to this day, a veteran of many subterranean campaigns, standing aside now, safe within his reputation of merely the greatest destructive publicist that ever lived.” Thus wrote my friend, adding that Mr. X was an enlightened connoisseur of bronzes and china, and asking me to show him my collection. X turned up in due course. My treasures are disposed in three large rooms without carpets and curtains. There is no other furniture than the etagres and the glass cases whose contents shall be worth a fortune to my heirs. I allow no fires to be lighted, for fear of accidents, and a fire-proof door separates them from the rest of the house. It was a bitter cold day. We kept on our overcoats and hats. Middle-sized and spare, his eyes alert in a long, Roman-nosed countenance, X walked on his neat little feet, with short steps, and looked at my collection intelligently. I hope I looked at him intelligently, too. A snow-white moustache and imperial made his nutbrown complexion appear darker than it really was. In his fur coat and shiny tall hat that terrible man looked fashionable. I believe he belonged to a noble family, and could have called himself Vicomte X de la Z if he chose. We talked nothing but bronzes and porcelain. He was remarkably appreciative. We parted on cordial terms. Where he was staying I don’t know. I imagine he must have been a lonely man. Anarchists, I suppose, have no families—not, at any rate, as we understand that social relation. Organization into families may answer to a need of human nature, but in the last instance it is based on law, and therefore must be something odious and impossible to an anarchist. But, indeed, I don’t understand anarchists. Does a man of that—of that—persuasion still remain an anarchist when alone, quite alone and going to bed, for instance? Does he lay his head on the pillow, pull his bedclothes over him, and go to sleep with the necessity of the chambardement general, as the French slang has it, of the general blow-up, always present to his mind? And if so how can he? I am sure that if such a faith (or such a fanaticism) once mastered my thoughts I would never be able to compose myself sufficiently to sleep or eat or perform any of the routine acts of daily life. I would want no wife, no children; I could have no friends, it seems to me; and as to collecting bronzes or china, that, I should say, would be quite out of the question. But I don’t know. All I know is that Mr. X took his meals in a very good restaurant which I frequented also. With his head uncovered, the silver top-knot of his brushed-up hair completed the character of his physiognomy, all bony ridges and sunken hollows, clothed in a perfect impassiveness of expression. His meagre brown hands emerging from large white cuffs came and went breaking bread, pouring wine, and so on, with quiet mechanical precision. His head and body above the tablecloth had a rigid immobility. This firebrand, this great agitator, exhibited the least possible amount of warmth and animation. His voice was rasping, cold, and monotonous in a low key. He could not be called a talkative personality; but with his detached calm manner he appeared as ready to keep the conversation going as to drop it at any moment. And his conversation was by no means commonplace. To me, I own, there was some excitement in talking quietly across a dinner-table with a man whose venomous pen-stabs had sapped the vitality of at least one monarchy. That much was a matter of public knowledge. But I knew more. I knew of him—from my friend—as a certainty what the guardians of social order in Europe had at most only suspected, or dimly guessed at. He had had what I may call his underground life. And as I sat, evening after evening, facing him at dinner, a curiosity in that direction would naturally arise in my mind. I am a quiet and peaceable product of civilization, and know no passion other than the passion for collecting things which are rare, and must remain exquisite even if approaching to the monstrous. Some Chinese bronzes are monstrously precious. And here (out of my friend’s collection), here I had before me a kind of rare monster. It is true that this monster was polished and in a sense even exquisite. His beautiful unruffled manner was that. But then he was not of bronze. He was not even Chinese, which would have enabled one to contemplate him calmly across the gulf of racial difference. He was alive and European; he had the manner of good society, wore a coat and hat like mine, and had pretty near the same taste in cooking. It was too frightful to think of. One evening he remarked, casually, in the course of conversation, “There’s no amendment to be got out of mankind except by terror and violence.” You can imagine the effect of such a phrase out of such a man’s mouth upon a person like myself, whose whole scheme of life had been based upon a suave and delicate discrimination of social and artistic values. Just imagine! Upon me, to whom all sorts and forms of violence appeared as unreal as the giants, ogres, and seven-headed hydras whose activities affect, fantastically, the course of legends and fairy-tales! I seemed suddenly to hear above the festive bustle and clatter of the brilliant restaurant the mutter of a hungry and seditious multitude. I suppose I am impressionable and imaginative. I had a disturbing vision of darkness, full of lean jaws and wild eyes, amongst the hundred electric lights of the place. But somehow this vision made me angry, too. The sight of that man, so calm, breaking bits of white bread, exasperated me. And I had the audacity to ask him how it was that the starving proletariat of Europe to whom he had been preaching revolt and violence had not been made indignant by his openly luxurious life. “At all this,” I said, pointedly, with a glance round the room and at the bottle of champagne we generally shared between us at dinner. He remained unmoved. “Do I feed on their toil and their heart’s blood? Am I a speculator or a capitalist? Did I steal my fortune from a starving people? No! They know this very well. And they envy me nothing. The miserable mass of the people is generous to its leaders. What I have acquired has come to me through my writings; not from the millions of pamphlets distributed gratis to the hungry and the oppressed, but from the hundreds of thousands of copies sold to the well-fed bourgeoisie. You know that my writings were at one time the rage, the fashion—the thing to read with wonder and horror, to turn your eyes up at my pathos . . . or else, to laugh in ecstasies at my wit.” “Yes,” I admitted. “I remember, of course; and I confess frankly that I could never understand that infatuation.” “Don’t you know yet,” he said, “that an idle and selfish class loves to see mischief being made, even if it is made at its own expense? Its own life being all a matter of pose and gesture, it is unable to realize the power and the danger of a real movement and of words that have no sham meaning. It is all fun and sentiment. It is sufficient, for instance, to point out the attitude of the old French aristocracy towards the philosophers whose words were preparing the Great Revolution. Even in England, where you have some common-sense, a demagogue has only to shout loud enough and long enough to find some backing in the very class he is shouting at. You, too, like to see mischief being made. The demagogue carries the amateurs of emotion with him. Amateurism in this, that, and the other thing is a delightfully easy way of killing time, and feeding one’s own vanity—the silly vanity of being abreast with the ideas of the day after to-morrow. Just as good and otherwise harmless people will join you in ecstasies over your collection without having the slightest notion in what its marvellousness really consists.” I hung my head. It was a crushing illustration of the sad truth he advanced. The world is full of such people. And that instance of the French aristocracy before the Revolution was extremely telling, too. I could not traverse his statement, though its cynicism—always a distasteful trait—took off much of its value to my mind. However, I admit I was impressed. I felt the need to say something which would not be in the nature of assent and yet would not invite discussion. “You don’t mean to say,” I observed, airily, “that extreme revolutionists have ever been actively assisted by the infatuation of such people?” “I did not mean exactly that by what I said just now. I generalized. But since you ask me, I may tell you that such help has been given to revolutionary activities, more or less consciously, in various countries. And even in this country.” “Impossible!” I protested with firmness. “We don’t play with fire to that extent.” “And yet you can better afford it than others, perhaps. But let me observe that most women, if not always ready to play with fire, are generally eager to play with a loose spark or so.” “Is this a joke?” I asked, smiling. “If it is, I am not aware of it,” he said, woodenly. “I was thinking of an instance. Oh! mild enough in a way . . .” I became all expectation at this. I had tried many times to approach him on his underground side, so to speak. The very word had been pronounced between us. But he had always met me with his impenetrable calm. “And at the same time,” Mr. X continued, “it will give you a notion of the difficulties that may arise in what you are pleased to call underground work. It is sometimes difficult to deal with them. Of course there is no hierarchy amongst the affiliated. No rigid system.” My surprise was great, but short-lived. Clearly, amongst extreme anarchists there could be no hierarchy; nothing in the nature of a law of precedence. The idea of anarchy ruling among anarchists was comforting, too. It could not possibly make for efficiency. Mr. X startled me by asking, abruptly, “You know Hermione Street?” I nodded doubtful assent. Hermione Street has been, within the last three years, improved out of any man’s knowledge. The name exists still, but not one brick or stone of the old Hermione Street is left now. It was the old street he meant, for he said: “There was a row of two-storied brick houses on the left, with their backs against the wing of a great public building—you remember. Would it surprise you very much to hear that one of these houses was for a time the centre of anarchist propaganda and of what you would call underground