by John Buchan
“Aw, come on, Baby,” he cried. “Get off the side-walk and come aboard. We got to hustle.”
They obeyed him, and the car presently slid into the traffic, the driver’s hat still tilted over his brows. Archie believed that he recognised one of the young women as a member of the party from the American yacht who had been dining in the hotel restaurant the night before. He rather resented their presence in Olifa. These half-witted children of pleasure were out of the picture which he had made for himself; they even conflicted with Olifa’s conception of herself. “The United States,” he told himself, “won’t be too popular in Latin America if it unlooses on the much goods of that type.”
At last the Avenida passed from shops and offices into a broad belt of garden, flanked on one side by the Customs house and on the other by the building which housed the port authorities. Beyond them lay the green waters of the old harbour, and the very spot where the first Conquistadors had landed. The new harbour, where the copper from the Gran Seco was shipped, lay farther south, close of the railway-stations; the old one was now almost unused except for fishing-boats, and as a landing-place for the yachts which berthed in the outer basin behind the great breakwater. To the north was a little plaza, which was all that remained of the first port of Olifa. It was a picturesque half-moon of crumbling stone, and seemed to be mainly composed of cafes and cinema houses.
Archie sniffed the salt breeze from the west, and limped cheerfully along the water-front, for he loved to be near he sea. In the outer basin he saw the funnels and top-gear of the yacht Corinna, on which he had aforetime enjoyed he Duke of Burminster’s hospitality. It annoyed him that his friend should have sold or chartered it to the kind of people he had seen in the motor-car.
A launch from the yacht was even then approaching the landing-stage. Archie could read the name on a sailor’s jersey. Two men were landed, one who looked like a steward, and the other a thick-set fellow in an engineer’s overalls. They separated at once, and the second of the two walked in Archie’s direction. Archie had a bad memory for faces, but there was something in this figure which woke recollection. As they came abreast and their eyes met, both came half unconsciously to a halt. The man seemed to stiffen and his right hand to rise in a salute which he promptly checked. He had a rugged face which might have been hewn out of mahogany, and honest, sullen, blue eyes.
“Hullo,” said Archie, “I’ve seen you before. Now, where on earth...?”
The man gave him no assistance, but stood regarding him in a sulky embarrassment. He sniffed, and in lieu of a handkerchief drew his hand across his nose, and the movement stirred some chord in Archie’s memory.
“I’ve got it. You were with General Hannay. I remember you in that black time before Amiens. Hamilton’s your name, isn’t it? Corporal Hamilton?”
Like an automaton the figure stiffened. “Sirr, that’s my name.” Then it relaxed. It was as if Archie’s words had recalled it for a moment to a military discipline which it hastened to repudiate.
“Do you remember me?”
“Ay. Ye’re Captain Sir Erchibald Roylance.” There was no ‘sirr’ this time.
“Well, this is a queer place to foregather. I think the occasion demands a drink. Let’s try one of these cafes.”
The man seemed unwilling. “I’m a wee bit pressed for time.”
“Nonsense, Hamilton, you can spare five minutes. I want to hear how you’ve been getting on and what landed you here. Hang it, you and I and the General went through some pretty stiff times together. We can’t part on this foreign strand with a how-d’ye-do.”
Archie led the way to a cafe in the crescent of old houses which looked a little cleaner than the rest. “What’ll you have, Hamilton?” he asked when they had found a table. “You probably don’t fancy the native wine. Bottled beer? Or rum? Or can you face aguardiente, which is the local whisky?”
“I’m a teetotaller. I’ll hae a glass o’ syrup.”
“Well, I’m dashed...Certainly — I never drink myself in the morning. Now, about yourself? You’re a Glasgow man, aren’t you? Pretty warm place, Glasgow. Are you and the other soldier-lads keeping the Bolshies in order?”
Hamilton’s mahogany face moved convulsively, and his blue eyes wandered embarrassedly to the door.
“My opinions has underwent a change. I’m thinkin’ of anither kind of war nowadays. I’m for the prolytawriat.”
“The devil you are!” Archie gasped. “So am I, but my opinions are still the same. What exactly do you mean?”
The man’s embarrassment increased. “I’m for the proly — prolytawriat. Us worrkers maun stick thegither and brek our chains. I’ve been fechtin’ for the rights o’ man.”
“Fighting with what?”
“Wi’ the pollis. That’s the reason I’m out here. I made Govan a wee thing ower het for me.”
Archie regarded him with a mystified face, which slowly broke into a smile. “I’m sorry to say that you’re a liar, Hamilton.”
“I’m tellin’ ye God’s truth,” was the reply without heat.
Embarrassment had gone, and the man seemed to be speaking a part which he had already rehearsed.
“No. You’re lying. Very likely you had trouble with the police, but I bet it wasn’t over politics. More likely a public-house scrap, or a girl. Why on earth you should want to make yourself out a Bolshie...?”
“My opinions has underwent a change,” the man chanted.
“Oh, drat your opinions! You got into some kind of row and cleared out. That’s intelligible enough, though I’m sorry to hear it. What’s your present job? Are you in the Corinna?”
“Ay, I cam out in her. I’m in the engine-room.”
“But you know nothing about ships?”
“I ken something aboot ship’s engines. Afore the war I wrocht at Clydebank...And now, if ye’ll excuse me I maun be off, for I’ve a heap o’ jobs ashore. Thank ye for your kindness.”
“I call this a perfectly rotten affair,” said Archie. “You won’t stay, you won’t drink, and you keep on talking like a parrot about the proletariat. What am I to say to Genera Hannay when I meet him? That you have become a blithering foreign communist?”
“Na, na. Ye maunna say that.” The man’s sullenness had gone, and there was humour in his eye. “Say that Geordie Hamilton is still obeyin’ orders, and daein’ his duty up to his lights.”
“Whose orders?” Archie asked, but the corporal was already making for the door.
The young man walked back to the hotel in a reflective mood, and at luncheon gave Janet a summary of the event of the morning. He had been storing up his impressions of Olifa for her, and had meant to descant upon the old city and the market and the Cathedral Square, but he found these pictures obscured by his later experiences. “Most extraordinary thing. I ran up against a fellow who used to be Dick Hannay’s batman — regular chunky Scots Fusilier and brave as a badger — Hamilton they call him. Well, he had the cheek to tell me that he had changed his views and become a Bolshie and had consequently had to clear out of Glasgow. I swear the chap was lying — could see it in his face — but I’m puzzled why he should want to lie to me...He says he has some kind of engineer’s job on the Corinna...More by token, I saw a selection of the Corinna party in a motor-car in the Avenida. Dressed up like nothing on earth, and chattering like jays!”
“We had them here this morning,” said Janet. “Pretty little savages with heads like mops. I’ve christened them the Moplahs.”
“Was there a fellow in starched linen bags? He was the prize donkey.”
Janet shook her head. “There was only one man with them and he wore white flannels. I can’t quite make them at. They behave like demented trippers, and are always pawing and ragging each other, but I came on the young man suddenly when I went to the bureau to ask about postage, and when the clerk couldn’t tell me he answered my question. His whole voice and manner seemed to change, and he became startlingly well-bred...I want to explore the Moplahs. And I would
rather like to see again the tall girl I had a glimpse of yesterday. I can’t get it out of my head that I’ve seen her before.”
III
On the following evening Janet and Archie dined as Don Alejandro’s guests at the Club de Residentes Extranjeros. The club, situated in one of the squares to the north of he Avenida, was a proof of Olifa’s wealth and her cosmopolitanism. In the broad cool patio a fountain tinkled, and between it and the adjoining arcades tropical plants in green tubs made the air fragrant. The building was for the most part a copy of an old Spanish town house, but the billiard-room was panelled in oak with a Tudor ceiling, the card-room was Flemish, and the big dining-room Italian Renaissance. The night was freshly warm, with light airs stirring the oleanders, and, from the table which Don Alejandro had selected, the patio was a velvet dusk shot with gold and silver gleams like tiny searchlights.
The only other guest was the American Consul. Mr Roderick Wilbur was a heavy man, with the smooth pale face of eupeptic but sedentary middle-age. His years in Olifa had not mellowed his dry, high-pitched New England voice, or endowed him with a single Latin, grace. He looked upon the other diners with the disapproving air of a Scots elder of the kirk surveying a travelling theatrical company, and the humour which now and then entered his eye was like the frosty twinkle of a very distant star.
Don Alejandro was in a vivacious mood. He was the showman of his beloved city, but he was no less a representative of his beloved Europe; he wished the strangers to praise Olifa but to recognise him as a cosmopolitan. Archie and Janet satisfied his patriotism, for, having hired a car that afternoon and driven round the city, they over-flowed in admiration.
“You were right,” Janet told him. “There is no mystery in Olifa. It is all as smooth and polished as a cabochon emerald, and, like a cabochon, you can’t see far inside it. Your people have the satisfied look of London suburbanites on a Sunday up the river.”
“Your police are too good,” said Archie. “One doesn’t see a single ragamuffin in the main streets. Janet and I prefer the old quarter. Some day, Don Alejandro, we want you to take us round it and tell us who the people are. They look like samples of every South American brand since the Aztecs.”
“The Aztecs lived in Mexico,” Janet corrected.
“Well, I mean the chaps that were downed by the Conquistadors.”
Don Alejandro laughed. “Our old quarter is only a tourist spectacle, like the native city in Tangier. For the true country life you must go to the estancias and the savannahs. I have arranged by telegraph for your visit to my cousin at Veiro.”
“And the Gran Seco?”
“That also is in train. But it is more difficult and will take time.”
“I said there was no mystery in Olifa,” Janet observed, “but I rather think I was wrong. There is the Gran Seco. It seems to be as difficult to get into it as into a munition factory. Have you been there, Mr. Wilbur?”
The American Consul had been devoting serious attention to his food, stopping now and then to regard Janet with benevolent attention.
“Why, yes, Lady Roylance,” he said. “I’ve been up to the Gran Seco just the once since it blossomed out. I’ve no great call to go there, for Americans don’t frequent it to any considerable extent.”
“Wilbur hates the place,” said Don Alejandro. “He thinks that every commercial undertaking on the globe should belong to his countrymen, and it vexes him that the Gran Seco capital should be European.”
“Don’t you pay any attention to Mr Gedd,” said the big man placidly. “He’s always picking on my poor little country. But I can’t say I care for that salubrious plateau. I don’t like being shepherded at every turn as if I was a crook, and I reckon the Montana sagebrush is more picturesque. Also they haven’t much notion up there of laying out a township. They’d be the better of some honest-to-God Americans to look after the plumbing.”
“See! He is all for standardising life. What a dull world the United States would make of it!”
“That’s so. We prefer dullness to microbes. All the same, there’s things about the Gran Seco which you can see with half an eye aren’t right. I didn’t like the look of the miners. You never in your days saw such a hang-dog, miserable bunch, just like some of our old Indian reservations where big chief Wet Blanket and his wives used to drink themselves silly on cheap bourbon. And how in thunder does Castor get his labour? He’s got a mighty graft somewhere, but when I first came here the Gran Seco Indians were a difficult folk to drive. I’ve heard that in old times the Olifa Government had trouble with them over the conscription.”
“They were savages,” said Don Alejandro, “and they are savages still. Castor has doubtless the art of dealing with them, for he himself is on the grand scale a savage.”
Archie pricked up his ears. “Castor? Who is he?”
“The Gobernador of the province. Also the President of the company.”
“I saw a fellow coming out of the Gran Seco head office — a fellow with a black beard, who didn’t look as if he missed much.”
“That was Senor Castor. You are fortunate, Sir Archibald, for you, a new arrival, have already seen Olifa’s great man, and that is a privilege but rarely granted to us Oliferos. He descends upon us and vanishes as suddenly as a river mist.”
“Tell me about him,” said Janet. “Where does he come from? What is his nationality?”
Don Alejandro shook his head. “I do not know. Mr Wilbur, who is a man of hasty judgments, will say that he is a Jew. He is certainly a European, but not a Spaniard, though he speaks our tongue. I can only say that he emerged out of nothing five years ago, and became at once a prince. He rules the Gran Seco, and its officials are altogether his creation. And since he rules the Gran Seco he rules Olifa. He has, as Mr Wilbur would say, this country of mine by the short hairs.”
“He don’t meddle with politics,” said the American, and Janet noticed that as he spoke he cast a quick glance around him, as if he did not wish to be overheard. Don Alejandro, too, had lowered his voice.
“What nonsense!” said the latter. “He is money, and money is our politics to-day. Once we Latins of America were a great race. We were Europeans, with minds enlarged and spirits braced by a new continent. You are the soldier, Sir Archibald, and will remember that the bloodiest battles of last century were fought in La Plata and on the Uruguay. Our plains were the nursery of the liberties of Italy. But now we have but the one goddess. We are rich and nothing more. Soon we shall be richer, and then my dear Wilbur, we shall be the devotees of your great country, which is the high-priest of riches.”
“I can’t say that you’re showing any special devotion just at present,” said the other dryly. “My nationals — thank God there aren’t many — are about the most unpopular in this State. But quit talking about politics. We’re out to give you a good time, Lady Roylance, and we want to know just how you’d like us to set about it.”
Janet was of a patient and philosophical temper, but Archie liked to take his sensations in gulps. So far Olifa, he admitted to himself, had been a little boring. The place, for all its beauty, had a deadly commonplaceness — it was the typical bourgeois State, as Don Alejandro had declared the first night. And yet he was conscious that this judgment did not exhaust the matter. There were moments when he felt that Olifa was a strange woman in a mask of cheap silk, a volcano overspread with suburban gardens. Behind even the decorousness of the Avenida he savoured a mystery. Into the pleasant monotony of the days had come wafts of air from some other sphere — a peasant’s face in the market, the bearded Gobernador, the pallid men in the hotel, even the preposterous figure of Dick Hannay’s former batman. These things had stirred in him an irrational interest...
Perhaps if he went into the hinterland he would find the clamour of Olifa, of whose existence he was convinced, but which had hitherto contrived to evade him.
The club dining-room was full, and when they left it for coffee on the terrace beside the patio they had difficulty in findi
ng chairs. It was apparently the practice to dine elsewhere and come to the club to dance, for a band was pounding out ragtime, and a dozen couples were on the floor.
“The Moplahs,” Janet sighed happily.
It was beyond doubt the American party from the yacht, and in that place they were as exotic as a tuberose in a bed of wallflowers. They had conformed to convention in their dress, for the four men wore dinner-jackets, and the four girls bright, short-skirted, silk-taffeta gowns and long pearl necklaces. Among the powdered Olifero ladies and the sallow Olifero cavaliers their fresh skins made a startling contrast, and not less startling were their shrill, toneless voices. They chattered incessantly, crying badinage to each other and to the band, as they danced the half-savage dances with an abandon which now suggested wild children and now the lunatic waltzing of hares in an April moonlight. Janet laughed aloud, the picture was so crazily fantastic. A Spanish girl, in a frock with wide flounces and with blue-black hair dressed high and surmounted by a gold comb, was suddenly cannoned into by a fluffy-headed minx, who apologised in a voice like a vindictive kitten’s, and was rewarded by a stony stare. Just so, Janet remembered, she had seen a greyhound repel the impudence of a Skye terrier.
“I don’t see my tall girl,” she said.
“The fellow with the starched linen knickerbockers isn’t here,” said Archie. “I didn’t see his face, but I think I would know him again. Who are they, Mr Wilbur?”
The American’s eyes were hard with disapproval. “I can’t tell you their names, but they’re off the Corinna. They’re in Burton Rawlinson’s party. Mr Rawlinson isn’t on board himself, and there can’t be much of a restraining hand to shepherd the bunch. Some of them have been to my office, and I judge I’m going to hear of trouble with them before they quit these shores. They want this city to stop still and take notice of them.”
