Part 15 (2/2)
Perez brightened right up. ”You have something thought about?” he asked, eager. ”Do not go to the hotel to-night. Let me be your host--we are right at the door--_Su casa_, Senor--let me offer my little entertainment, and we shall to talk further--will you not let it be so?”
I liked Perez and I wanted to talk as much as he did. ”Much obliged,”
says I; ”I hate a hotel, anyhow.” So in we went.
XII
BILL MEETS A RELATIVE
Perez had a fine house, a revelation to me; big halls, big rooms, the walls covered with pictures, Injun relics, armor, swords, guns, and what not; many servants to fetch and carry, and an ease and comfort over it for which delicious is the only word.
We had a bully little dinner out in the cool garden, which I got through all right by playing second to Perez. The finger-bowls had me off the trail a little, but I waited and discovered their purpose. You can find out everything if you wait long enough.
Then with coffee and cigars we began to talk.
”Now for the plan of Senor Saunders,” says Perez, opening the bottom of his well-supported vest. He looked so respectable and ordinary sitting there, that my plan lost its light. I forgot the other side of him.
”Well,” I begun, lamely, ”Saxton wants to marry Mary.”
Perez politely acknowledged that such was the fact.
”Then,” says I, ”why don't he just do it?”
Perez looked his disappointment.
”That would be well, surely,” says he in the tone one uses to a harmless fool.
”Here,” says I. ”First, I want to break into Mr. Belknap. You say he's got some kind of political game on?”
Perez renewed his interest. ”_Si_,” says he. ”This is what he makes. He is now going to and fro, putting those that have come to his church against those of the old religion. Against the Catholic Church he lays the blame of everything wrong. It will be a revolution, he says, to annihilate that enemy of man, the old church, and in its place put that wonder of virtue, the church of Mr. Belknap. What _will_ happen is that many poor men shall be killed, and the wolf-rascals get fat, as usual.
With Belknap are the few in earnest, who think; the many who neither care nor think, but are led; those that fight for love of it; those who are hypocrites, and those who look for profit. On our side, the same.
There is no advantage to either by comparison in that. In here comes the difference. Such men as Orinez and myself know that this unhappy land must have peace, before any notion of right can grow. When it is all fight, fight, fight, one cannot think evenly--has your brother been killed? Your wife and sisters murdered? And then you will think calmly of the issue? Time is needed to heal these old wounds, that more can work together. So Orinez and I fight for time--I with my money and my counsel, he with the terror of his name. Once I did Orinez a favor; he never forgets. So when I called to help me in this, the tiger sheathed his claws; the man of blood turned shepherd; the robber, honest; but,”--and here Perez's voice took a bitterness worse than curses,--”but Mr. Belknap, that respected man of G.o.d, will have it that the need of the State is the drawing of blood--once more, fire, slaughter, rape, till the land stinks with corpses, lays black in the sunlight and rings with the cries of injured women--a great work....”
Perez stood up, gripping the table. ”I am a little, peaceful man,” he said, ”but there are times when I could drive a knife through that man and shout with joy for every blow.” He sat down quickly and smiled a faint smile. ”_My_ obsession,” said he, wiping his forehead; ”I, too, preach peace through the letting of blood. Belknap may be as much in earnest as myself--Bah! This foolish pretense of candor! He is _not_; he is a scoundrel--whether he knows it or not, a scoundrel.”
”Well, that's good news,” said I. ”It won't be hard for me to pick a quarrel with him, which is precisely what I intend to do. I'll meet his schemes with some of my own, Mary likes me, and it will be at least a stand-off in her mind if Brother Belknap and I fall out. Then the next thing is for Arthur to get a party of men, capture Mary, take her off and marry her.”
Perez threw up his hands in horror. ”Senor Saunders!” he cried; ”for you to say this! I am astonished! Abstract the lady without her wish? Surely I have not heard you rightly--_chanzas aparte_, you play with me--you wish to see me look?”
”Not I,” says I, stout; ”I mean every word of it. As Sax said this afternoon, there's times when it's wicked to twiddle with courtesy. That girl will ruin her whole life if Belknap has the making of it. Her friends oughtn't to stand by and see it done--d.a.m.n it, man! Suppose she dropped her handkerchief as she was falling over a cliff--what would you do first: save her life or pick up the handkerchief?”
Perez puffed and thought a moment. ”_Tiene V. razon_,” he says, ”there is more here than a ball-room. I knew her as a girl, I know her now.
Belknap I know too. My life I stake on it that for Belknap to win her, means her life wrecked, and yet I stop--from habit. I stake my life--I mean it--on my judgment, yet dare not stake an action to make that judgment good.”
He waited again, while the minutes slipped by; drumming on the table; s.h.i.+fting things in his mind. The whole air of long, long use to the handsome, nice things I saw about me struck me strong in the man. He was born to it, and his forebears centuries before him. Yet instead of breeding out the man in him, it had only taken off the sc.u.m.
At last he spoke. ”Give me more time, _campanero_. I shall consider this further. To meddle with other lives is always a dangerous business, just as not to meddle may be a shameful one. As it stands, if he gets not the lady for a wife, Saxton is a lost man--I know him. On his word, on your word and on my word, she is not indifferent to him. We know Belknap is a rascal, and for her unfit. And so, action--yet I am a man of peace.”
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