The Four Corners of the World. A. E. W. Mason

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СКАЧАТЬ "It's--it's----" "Tyrannical" would not do, nor would "autocratic." Neither epithet would sting him. At last I got the right one.

      "Your Excellency, it's barbaric!"

      Juan Ballester flushed red. I had touched him on the raw. To be a thoroughly civilised person conducting a thoroughly civilised Government over a thoroughly civilised community--that was his wild, ambitious dream, and in rosy moments he would even flatter himself that his dream was realised.

      "It's nothing of the kind," he exclaimed. "Don Santiago is a dangerous person. I was moved by chivalry, the most cultured of virtues, to let him go unpunished. But I am bound, from the necessities of the State, to retain some pledge for his decent behaviour."

      The words sounded very fine and politic, but they could not obscure the springs of his conduct. He had first got Harry Vandeleur out of the way; then, and not till then, he had pounced upon Don Santiago. His aim had been to isolate Olivia. There was very little chivalry about the matter.

      "Besides," he argued, "if there were any barbarism--and there isn't--the Señorita can put an end to it by a word."

      "But she won't say it!" I cried triumphantly. "No, she is already pledged. She won't say it."

      Juan Ballester looked at me swiftly with a set and lowering face. No doubt I had gone a step too far with him. But I would not have taken back a word at that moment--no, not for the monopoly of green paint. I awaited my instant dismissal, but he suddenly tilted back his chair and grinned at me like a schoolboy.

      "I like a good spirit," he said, "whether it be in the Señorita or in my private secretary."

      It was apparent that he did not think much of me as an antagonist.

      "Well," I grumbled, "Harry Vandeleur will be back in three weeks, and your Excellency must make your account with him."

      "Yes, that's true," said Ballester, and--I don't know what it was in him. It was not a gesture, for he did not move; it was not a smile, for his face did not change. But I was immediately and absolutely certain that it was not true at all. Reflection confirmed me. He had taken so much pains to isolate Olivia that he would not have overlooked Harry Vandeleur's return. Somewhere, on some pretext, at Trinidad, or at our own port here, Las Cuevas, Harry Vandeleur would be stopped. I was sure of it. The net was closing tightly round Olivia. This morning the affair had seemed so simple--a mere matter of a six hours' journey in a train. Now it began to look rather grim. I stole a glance at Juan. He was still sitting with his chair tilted back and his hands in his pockets, but he was gazing out of the window, and his face was in repose. I recalled Olivia's phrase: "He is the cruellest of men." Was she right? I wondered. In any case, yes, the affair certainly began to look rather grim.

IV

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      I was not free until five that afternoon. But I was in the Calle Madrid before the quarter after five had struck. Again Olivia herself admitted me. She led the way to her father's study at the back of the house. Though I had hurried to the house, I followed her slowly into the study.

      "You are still alone?" I asked.

      "An old woman--we once befriended her--will come in secretly for an hour in the morning."

      "Secretly?"

      "She dare not do otherwise."

      I was silent. There was a refinement about Juan Ballester's persecution which was simply devilish. He would not molest her, he left her apparently free. But he kept her in a great, empty house in the middle of the town, without servants, without power to leave, without--oh, much more than I had any idea of at the time. He marooned her in the midst of a great town even as Richard the Third did with Jane Shore in the old play. But, though I did not know, I noticed that she had changed since the morning. She had come out from her interview with Juan Ballester holding her head high. Now she stood in front of me twisting her hands, a creature of fear.

      "You must escape," I said.

      Her great eyes looked anxiously at me from a wan face.

      "I must," she said. "Yes, I must." Then came a pause, and with a break in her voice she continued. "He warned me not to try. He said that it would not be pleasant for me if I were caught trying."

      "A mere threat," I said contemptuously, "like the prisons." But I did not believe my own words, and my blood ran cold. It would be easy to implicate Olivia in the treachery of her father. And the police in Maldivia are not very gentle in their handling of their prisoners, women or men. Still, that risk must be run.

      "The Ariadne--an English mail-steamer--calls at Las Cuevas in a fortnight," I said. "We must smuggle you out on her."

      Olivia stared at me in consternation. She stood like one transfixed.

      "A fortnight!" she said. Then she sat down in a chair clasping her hands together. "A fortnight!" she whispered to herself, and as I listened to her, and watched her eyes glancing this way and that like an animal trapped in a cage, it was borne in on me that since this morning some new thing had happened to frighten the very soul of her. I begged her to tell it me.

      "No," she said, rising to her feet. "No doubt I can wait for a fortnight."

      "That's right, Olivia," I said. "I will arrange a plan. Meanwhile, where can I hear from you and you from me? It will not do for us to meet too often. Have you friends who will be staunch?"

      "I wonder," she said slowly. "Enrique Gimeno and his wife, perhaps."

      "We will not strain their friendship very much. But we can meet at their house. You can leave a letter for me there, perhaps, and I one for you."

      Enrique Gimeno was a Spanish merchant and a gentleman. So far, I felt sure, we could trust him. There was one other man in Santa Paula on whom I could rely, the agent of the steamship company to which the Ariadne belonged. I rang him up on the telephone that afternoon and arranged a meeting after dark in a back room of that very inferior hotel in the lower town where for some weeks I had lived upon credit. The agent, a solid man with business interests of his own in Maldivia, listened to my story without a word of interruption. Then he said:

      "There are four things I can do for you, and no more. In the first place, I can receive here the lady's luggage in small parcels and put it together for her. In the second, I can guarantee that the Ariadne shall not put into Las Cuevas until dusk, and shall leave the same night. In the third, I will have every bale of cargo already loaded into her before the passenger train comes alongside from Santa Paula. And in the fourth, I will arrange that the Ariadne shall put to sea the moment the last of her passengers has crossed the gangway. The rest you must do for yourself."

      "Thank you," said I. "That's a great deal."

      But the confidence was all in my voice and none of it at all in my heart. I went back to Juan Ballester and tried persuasion with him.

      "I have seen Olivia Calavera this afternoon," I said to him.

      "I know," said he calmly.

      I had personally no longer any fear that he might dismiss me. I would, I think, have thrown up my job myself, but that I seemed to have a better chance of СКАЧАТЬ