The Purple Land/Volume 1/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
RAMBLES IN MODERN TROY.
I will not linger on our nocturnal and somewhat hurried departure from Romola's home and the events immediately following; our concealment in town, marriage and embarcation. I will begin this itinerary where, safe on our little ship with the towers of Buenos Ayres fast fading away in the west, we began to feel free from apprehension and to give ourselves up to the contemplation of the delights of matrimony. Winds and waves presently interfered with our raptures, Romola proving a very indifferent sailor, so that for some hours we had a very trying time of it. Next day a favourable northwest breeze sprung up to send us flying like a bird over those unlovely red billows, and In the evening we disembarked in Montevideo, the city of refuge. We proceeded to an hotel, where for several days we lived very happily, enchanted with each other's society; and when we strolled along the beach to watch the setting sun, kindling with mystic fire heaven, water, and the soaring mountain that gives the city its name, and remembered that we were looking towards the shores of Buenos Ayres, it was pleasant to reflect that the widest river in the world rolled between us and those who probably felt offended at what we had done.
This charming state of things came to an end at length in a somewhat curious manner. One night, before we had been a month in the hotel, I was lying wide awake in bed. It was late; I had already heard the mournful, long-drawn voice of the watchman under my window calling out, "Half-past one and cloudy."
Gil Blas relates in his biography that one night while lying awake he fell into practising a little introspection, which was an unusual thing for him to do, and the conclusion he came to was that he was not a very good young man. I was having a somewhat similar experience that night when, in the midst of my unflattering thoughts about myself, a profound sigh from Romola made me aware that she too was lying wide awake and also, in all probability, chewing the cud of reflection. When I questioned her concerning that sigh, she tried hard, but in vain, to conceal from me that she was beginning to feel very unhappy. What a rude shock the discovery gave me! And we so lately married! But it is only just to Romola, however, to say that had I not married her she would have been still more unhappy. Only the poor child could not help thinking of mother and father; she yearned for reconciliation, and her present sorrow rose from her belief that they would never, never, never forgive her. I endeavoured, with all the eloquence I was capable of, to dispel these gloomy ideas, but she was firm in her conviction that precisely because they had loved her so much they would never forgive her this great first offence. My poor darling might have been reading Christabel, I thought, when she said that it is toward those who have been most deeply loved the wounded heart cherishes the greatest bitterness. Then, by way of illustration, she told me of a quarrel between her mother and a, till then, dearly loved sister. It had happened many years ago when she, Romola, was a mere child; yet the sisters had never forgiven each other.
"And where," I asked, "is this aunt of yours, of whom I have never heard you speak until this minute?"
"Oh," answered Romola, with the greatest simplicity imaginable, "she left this country long long ago, and you never heard of her because we were not even allowed to mention her name in the house. She went to live in Montevideo, and I believe she is there still, for several years ago I heard some person say that she had bought herself a house in that city."
"Soul of my life," said I, "you have never left Buenos Ayres in heart, even to keep your poor husband company! Yet I know, Romola, that corporeally you are here in Montevideo conversing with me at this very moment."
"True," said Romola; "I had somehow forgotten that we were in Montevideo. My thoughts were wandering,—perhaps it is sleepiness."
"I swear to you, Romola," I replied, " that you shall see this aunt of yours to-morrow before set of sun; and I am positive, sweetest, that she will be delighted to receive so near and lovely a relation. How glad she will be of an opportunity of relating that ancient quarrel with her sister and ventilating her mouldy grievances! I know these old dames—they are all alike."
Romola did not like the idea at first, but when I assured her that the hotel expenses were too heavy for us, and that her aunt might be able to put me in the way of obtaining employment, she consented, like the dutiful little wife she was.
Next day I discovered her relation without very much trouble, Montevideo not being a large city. We found Doña Isidora—for that was the lady's name—living in a somewhat mean-looking house at the eastern extremity of the town, furthest away from the water. There was an air of poverty about the place, for the good dame, though well provided with means to live comfortably, made a pet of her gold. Nevertheless, she received us very kindly when we introduced ourselves and related our mournful and romantic story; a room was prepared for our immediate reception, and she even made me some vague promises of assistance. On a more intimate acquaintance with our hostess we found that I had not been very far out in guessing her character. For several days she could talk of nothing except her immemorial quarrel with her sister and her sister's husband, and we were bound to listen very attentively and to sympathise with her, for that was the only return we could make for her hospitality. Romola had more than her share of it, but was made no wiser as to the cause of this feud of long standing; for, though Doña Isidora had evidently been nursing her wrath all those years to keep it warm, she could not, for the life of her, remember how the quarrel first originated. I soon discovered a way to alleviate, in part at any rate, my poor little wife's sufferings. I could mimic the old lady's manner and cracked voice very well, and every night after we had meekly bowed our heads to receive the auntly blessing and had shut ourselves up in our room, I would invent some new ludicrous story about the cause of the celebrated quarrel, and Romola, having a high opinion of her lord's histrionic abilities, would laugh at the performance till the tears ran down her cheeks.
After breakfast each morning I would kiss her and hand her over to the tender mercies of her Isidora, then go forth on my fruitless perambulations about the town. At first I only acted the intelligent foreigner, going about staring at the public buildings, and collecting curious, strangely marked pebbles, and a few military brass buttons, long shed by the garments they once made brave; rusty mis-shapen bullets, mementoes of the immortal nine or ten years' siege which had won for Montevideo the mournful appellation of modern Troy; also a few botanical specimens, weeds being frail lovely flowers growing in the crumbling neglected walls. These often reminded me of a passage in a poet of old Spain, which I very freely paraphrased in this fashion:—
Her legions, triumphs, empire vast—
Did it last?
O wanderer from a distant home,
Resting on thy pilgrim staff,
This is her sepulchre; 'neath these round heaps,
To wake no more, she sleeps:
Here all-surviving Nature weaves,
With yellow wall-flowers and with ivy leaves,
Rome's epitaph!
When I had satisfied the exigencies of my poetical nature by composing these lines, remarkable only for their inapplicability, and had sufficiently surveyed from the outside the scene of my future triumphs—for I had now resolved to settle down and make my fortune in Montevideo—I began seriously to look out for employment. I visited in turn every large mercantile establishment in the place, and, in fact, every house where I thought there might be a chance of lighting on something to do. It was necessary to make a beginning, and I would not have turned up my nose at anything, however small, I was so heartily sick of being poor, idle, and dependent. Nothing could I find. In one house I was told that the city had not yet recovered from the effects of the late revolution, and that business was, in consequence, in a complete state of paralysis; in another, that the city was on the eve of another revolution, and that business was, in consequence, in a complete state of paralysis. And everywhere it was the same story—the political state of the country made it impossible for me to win an honest dollar.
Feeling very much dispirited, and with the soles nearly worn off my boots, I sat down on a bench beside the sea, or river—for some call it one thing some the other, and the doubtful hue and freshness of the water, and the uncertain words of geographers, leave one in doubt as to whether Montevideo is situated on the shores of the Atlantic, or only near the Atlantic, and on the shores of a river one hundred and fifty miles wide at its mouth. I did not trouble my head about it; I had other things that concerned me very much more nearly to think of. I had a quarrel with this Oriental nation, and that was more to me than the greenness or the saltness of the vast estuary that washes the dirty feet of its queen —for this modern Troy, this city of battle, murder, and sudden death, also calls itself Queen of the Plata. And that it was a very just quarrel on my part I felt well assured. Now, to be even with every human creature who despitefully uses me has ever been a principle of action with me. Nor let it be said that it is an unchristian principle; for when I have been smitten on the right or left cheek (the pain is just the same in either case), before I am prepared to deliver the return blow, so long a time has often elapsed that all wrathful or revengeful thoughts are over. I strike in such a case more for the public good than for my own satisfaction, and am therefore right in calling my motive a principle of action, and not an impulse. It is a very valuable principle too, infinitely more effective than the fantastical code of the duellist, which favours most the person who inflicts the injury, affording him facilities for murdering or maiming the person injured. It 1s a weapon invented for us by Nature, before Colonel Colt ever lived, and it has this advantage, that one is permitted to wear it in the most law-abiding communities as well as amongst miners and backwoodsmen. If inoffensive people were ever to cast it aside, then wicked men would have everything their own way and make life intolerable. Fortunately the evil-doers always have the fear of this intangible six-shooter before them; a wholesome feeling, which restrains them more than remorse or the law courts, and to which we owe it that the meek are permitted to inherit the earth. But now this quarrel was with a whole nation, though certainly not with a very great one, since the population of the Banda Oriental numbers only about a quarter of a million. Yet in this sparsely settled country, with its bountiful soil and genial climate, there was apparently no place for me, a muscular and fairly intelligent young man, who only asked to be allowed to work to live! But how was I to make them smart for this injustice? I could not take the scorpion they gave me, when I asked them for an egg, and make it sting every individual composing the nation. I was powerless—utterly powerless—to punish them, and therefore the only thing that remained for me to do was to curse them.
Having arrived at this thought, I did not at once proceed to give it expression. Looking around me, my eyes rested on the soaring mountain across the bay; a sudden inspiration came to me, and I determined to go up to its summit, and, looking down on the Banda Oriental, pronounce my imprecation in the most solemn and impressive manner.
The expedition to the cerro, as it is called, proved very agreeable. Notwithstanding the excessive heats we were just then having, innumerable wild flowers were blooming on its slopes, which made it a perfect garden. An old fort crowns the summit, and when I had got that far I climbed on to a wall and sat resting for half an hour, greatly enjoying the prospect before me, and fanned by the fresh afternoon breeze from the river. I had not left out of sight the serious object of my visit to that commanding spot, and only wished that the malediction I was about to utter could be rolled down in the shape of a stupendous rock, loosed from its hold, and which would go bounding down the mountain, and, leaping clear over the bay, crash through the iniquitous city beyond, filling it with ruin and amazement.
"Whichever way I turn," I said, "I see before me one of the fairest habitations God has made for man; great plains smiling with everlasting spring; ancient woods; swift beautiful rivers; ranges of blue hills stretching away to the dim horizon. And beyond those fair slopes, how many leagues of pleasant wilderness are sleeping in the sunshine, where the wild flowers waste their sweetness and no plough turns the fruitful soil, where deer and ostrich roam fearless of the hunter, while over all bends a blue sky without a cloud to stain its exquisite beauty? And the people dwelling in yon city—the key to a continent—they are the possessors of it all. It is theirs, since the world, out of which the old spirit is fast dying, has suffered them to keep it. What have they done with this heritage? What are they doing even now? They are sitting dejected in their houses, or standing in their doorways with folded arms and anxious expectant faces. For a change is coming: they are on the eve of a tempest. Not an atmospheric change; no blighting simoon will sweep over their fields, nor will any volcanic eruption darken their chrystal heavens. The earthquakes that shake the Andean cities to their foundations, they have never known and they can never know. The expected change and tempest is a political one. The plot is ripe, the daggers sharpened, the contingent of assassins hired, the throne of human skulls, styled in their ghastly facetiousness a Presidential Chair, is about to be assaulted. It is long, weeks or even months perhaps, since the last wave, crested with bloody froth, rolled its desolating flood over the country; it is high time therefore for all men to prepare themselves for the shock of the succeeding wave. And we consider it right to root up thorns and thistles, to drain malarious marshes, to extirpate rats and vipers; but it would be immoral, I suppose, to stamp out these people, because their vicious natures are disguised in human shape; this people that in crimes have surpassed all others, ancient or modern, until because of them the name of a whole continent has grown to be a by-word of scorn and reproach throughout the earth, and to stink in the nostrils of all men!
"I swear that I, too, will become a conspirator if I remain long on this soil. Oh, for a thousand young men of Devon and Somerset here with me, every one of them with a brain on fire with thoughts like mine! What a glorious deed would be done for the human race, since that false humanity that shrinks and shrieks at the sight of blood would be left far off at home, to flap its wings and utter its impotent cockatoo screams in Exeter Hall! What a mighty cheer we would raise for the glory of the old England that is passing away. Blood would flow in yon streets as it never flowed there before, or, I should say, as it only flowed in them once before, and that was when they were swept clean by British bayonets. And afterwards there would be peace, and the grass would be greener and the flowers brighter for that crimson shower.
"Is it not then bitter as wormwood and gall to think that over these domes and towers beneath my feet, no longer than half a century ago, fluttered the holy cross of St. George! For never was there a holier crusade undertaken, never a nobler conquest planned, than that which had for its object the wresting this fair country from unworthy hands, and making it for all time part of the mighty English kingdom. What would it have been now—this bright winterless Jand, and this city commanding the entrance to the greatest river in the world? And to think that it was won for England, not treacherously, or bought with gold, but in the old Saxon fashion with hard blows, and climbing over heaps of slain defenders; and after it was thus won, to think that it was lost—will it be believed?—not fighting, but yielded up without a stroke by craven wretches unworthy of the name of Britons! Here, sitting alone on this mountain, my face burns like fire when I think of it—this glorious opportunity lost forever! 'We offer you your laws, your religion, and property under the protection of the British Government,' loftily proclaimed the invaders—Generals Beresford, Achmuty, Whitelocke and their companions; and presently, after suffering one reverse, they lost heart and exchanged the country they had drenched in blood, and had conquered, for a couple of thousand British soldiers made prisoners in Buenos Ayres across the water; then, getting into their ships once more, they sailed away from the Plata forever! This transaction, which must have made the bones of our Viking ancestors rattle with indignation in their graves, was forgotten later on when we seized the rich Falklands. A splendid conquest and a glorious compensation for our loss! When yon queen city was in our grasp, and the regeneration, possibly even the ultimate possession, of this green world before us, our hearts failed and the prize dropped from our trembling hands. We left the sunny mainland to capture the desolate haunt of seals and penguins; and now let all those who in this quarter of the globe aspire to live under that 'British Protection' of which Achmuty preached so loudly at the gates of yon capital, transport themselves to those lonely antarctic islands to listen to the thunder of the waves on the grey shores and shiver in the bleak winds that blow from the frozen south!"
After delivering this comminatory address I felt greatly relieved, and went home in a cheerful frame of mind to supper, which consisted that evening of mutton scrag, boiled with pumpkin sweet potatoes and milky maize—not at all a bad dish for a hungry man.