第42章

Mrs Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice, looking at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body, obese to the point of infirmity, thought that this man of delicate and melancholy mind, physically almost a cripple, coming out of his retirement into a dangerous strife at the call of his fellows, had the right to speak with the authority of his self-sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He was more pathetic than promising, this first civilian Chief of the State Costaguana had ever known, pronouncing, glass in hand, his simple watch-words of honesty, peace, respect for law, political good faith abroad and at home -- the safeguards of national honour.

He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices that followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy, drooping eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy dullness from face to face. The military backwoods hero of the party, though secretly impressed by the sudden novelties and splendours of his position (he had never been on board a ship before, and had hardly ever seen the sea except from a distance), understood by a sort of instinct the advantage his surly, unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all these refined Blanco aristocrats.

But why was it that nobody was looking at him? he wondered to himself angrily.

He was able to spell out the print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed the `greatest military exploit of modern times'.

`My husband wanted the railway,' Mrs Gould said to Sir John in the general murmur of resumed conversations. `All this brings nearer the sort of future we desire for the country, which has waited for it in sorrow long enough, God knows. But I will confess that the other day, during my afternoon drive when I suddenly saw an Indian boy ride out of a wood with the red flag of a surveying party in his hand, I felt something of a shock. The future means change -- an utter change. And yet even here there are simple and picturesque things that one would like to preserve.'

Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now to hush Mrs Gould.

`General Montero is going to speak,' he whispered, and almost immediately added, in comic alarm, `Heavens! he's going to propose my own health, Ibelieve.'

General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised and sinister vaquero .

The drone of his voice had a strangely rasping, soulless ring. He floundered, lowering, through a few vague sentences; then suddenly raising his big head and his voice together, burst out harshly:

`The honour of the country is in the hands of the army. I assure you I shall be faithful to it.' He hesitated till his roaming eyes met Sir John's face, upon which he fixed a lurid, sleepy glance; and the figure of the lately negotiated loan came into his mind. He lifted his glass.

`I drink to the health of the man who brings us a million and a half of pounds.'

He tossed off his champagne, and sat down heavily with a half-surprised, half-bullying look all round the faces in the profound, as if appalled, silence which succeeded the felicitous toast. Sir John did not move.

`I don't think I am called upon to rise,' he murmured to Mrs Gould.

`That sort of thing speaks for itself.' But Don Jose Avellanos came to the rescue with a short oration, in which he alluded pointedly to England's goodwill towards Costaguana -- `a goodwill', he continued, significantly, `of which I, having been in my time accredited to the Court of St James, am able to speak with some knowledge.'

Only then Sir John thought fit to respond, which he did gracefully in bad French, punctuated by bursts of applause and the `Hear! Hears!' of Captain Mitchell, who was able to understand a word now and then. Directly he had done, the financier of railways turned to Mrs Gould:

`You were good enough to say that you intended to ask me for something,'

he reminded her, gallantly. `What is it? Be assured that any request from you would be considered in the light of a favour to myself.'

She thanked him by a gracious smile. Everybody was rising from the table.

`Let us go on deck,' she proposed, `where I'll be able to point out to you the very object of my request.'

An enormous national flag of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow, with two green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the mainmast head of the Juno . A multitude of fireworks being let off in their thousands at the water's edge in honour of the President kept up a mysterious crepitating noise half round the harbour. Now and then a lot of rockets, swishing upwards invisibly, detonated overhead with only a puff of smoke in the bright sky.

Crowds of people could be seen between the town gate and the harbour, under the bunches of multicoloured flags fluttering on tall poles. Faint bursts of military music would be heard suddenly, and the remote sound of shouting.

A knot of ragged Negroes at the end of the wharf kept on loading and firing a small iron cannon time after time. A greyish haze of dust hung thin and motionless against the sun.