Part 14 (1/2)

”Yes,” he said sadly; ”glorious as the gilded frame of a mirror, all l.u.s.tre and brightness, while underneath it is composition, and wood, and ill-smelling glue. Why, my dear boy, I am only living from hand to mouth. This looks, of course, all very bright and beautiful to you, and a wonderful contrast to hazy, foggy, cold old England--Heaven bless it!

But fire-flies, and humming-birds, and golden suns.h.i.+ne, and gaily-painted blossoms are not victuals and drink, Harry; and, besides, when you set to and earn your victuals and drink, you don't know but what they will all be taken away from you. We've no laws here, my lad, worth a rush. We're a patriotic people here, with a great love of our country--we Spanish, half-bred republican heroes,” he said bitterly, ”and we love that country so well, Harry, that we are always murdering and enriching it with the blood of its best men. It might be a glorious place, but man curses it, and we are always having republican struggles, and bloodshed, and misery. We are continually having new presidents, here, my lad; and after being ruined three times, burned out twice, and saving my life by the skin of my teeth, the bright flowers and great green leaves seem to be powdered with ashes, and I'd gladly, any day, change this beautiful place, with its rich plantations, for fifty acres of land in one of the s.h.i.+res at home.”

”But don't you take rather a gloomy view of it all, Uncle?” I said, as I looked at him curiously.

But to my great discomfiture he burst out laughing, for he had read my thoughts exactly.

”My liver is as sound as yours, Harry, my boy,” he said; ”and I don't believe that there's a heartier man within fifty miles. No, my lad, I'm not jaundiced. There's no real prosperity here. The people are a lazy, loafing set, and never happy but when they are in hot water. There's the old, proud hidalgo blood mixed up in their veins; they are too grand to work--too lazy to wash themselves. There isn't a decent fellow in the neighbourhood, except one, and his name is Garcia--eh, Lill?” he said, laughing.

Lilla's face crimsoned as she bent over her work, while a few minutes after she rose and whispered to Mrs Landell.

”You must excuse me, Harry,” said my aunt, rising. ”Lilla is unwell; the shock has been too much for her.”

The next moment I was alone with my uncle, who proceeded in the same bitter strain:

”Yes, my lad, commerce is all nohow here--everything's sluggish, and I cannot see how matters are to mend. I'm glad to see you--heartily glad you have come. Stay with us a few months if you are determined upon a colonial life; see all you can of the country and judge for yourself; but Heaven forbid that I should counsel my sister's child to settle in such a revolutionary place!”

I was not long in finding out the truth of my uncle's words. The place was volcanic, and earthquakes of no uncommon occurrence; but Nature in the soil was not one half as bad as Nature in the human race--Spanish half-blood and Indian--with which she had peopled the region, for they were, to a man, stuffed with explosive material, which the spark of some speaker's language was always liable to explode.

But I was delighted with the climate, in spite of the heat; and during the calm, cool evenings, when the moon was glancing through the trees, bright, pure, and silvery, again and again I thought of how happy I could be there but for one thing.

That one thing was not the nature of the people nor their revolutionary outbursts, for I may as well own that commerce or property had little hold upon my thoughts until I found how necessary the latter was for my success. My sole thought in those early days, and the one thing that troubled me, was the constant presence of my uncle's wealthy neighbour, Pablo Garcia.

It was plain enough that he had been for months past a visitor, and that he had been looked upon as a suitor for Lilla's hand; but I could not discover whether she favoured him or no, for after meeting him a few times his very presence, with his calm, supercilious treatment of one whom he evidently hated from the bottom of his soul, was so galling to me, that upon his appearance I used to go out and ramble away for hours together, seeking the wilder wooded parts, and the precipitous spurs of the mountains, climbing higher and higher, till more than once in some lonely spot I came upon some trace of a bygone civilisation--ruined temple, or palace of grand proportions, but now overthrown and crumbling into dust, with the dense vegetation of the region springing up around, and in many places so covering it that it was only by accident that I discovered, in the darkened twilight of the leafy shade, column or mouldering wall, and then sat down to wonder and try and think out of the histories of the past who were the people that had left these traces of a former grandeur, and then over some carven stone light would spring to my understanding--a light that brought with it a thrill of hope.

Then I would return, as night threatened to hide the track, back to my uncle's, to be treated coldly, as I thought, by Lilla, while more than once it seemed that my uncle gazed upon me in a troubled way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

TOM SPEAKS HIS MIND.

A couple of months soon glided away--a time of mingled misery and pleasure. At one time I was light-hearted and happy, at another low-spirited and depressed; for I could not see that there was the slightest prospect of my hopes ever bearing fruit. I was growing nervous, too, about Garcia; not that I feared him, but his manner now betokened that he bore me ill-will of the most intense character.

As for Lilla, the longer I was at the hacienda the more plain it became that she feared him, shuddering at times when he approached--tokens of dislike that made his eyes flash, and for which it was very evident that he blamed me.

But his blame was unjust; he had credited me with having made known the cowardly part he had played on the river; but though my uncle and aunt were ignorant of it, the news reached Lilla's ears, the medium being Tom Bulk.

Tom had settled down very comfortably at the hacienda, taking to smoking and hanging about the plantation sheds, and doing a little here or there as it pleased him, but none the less working very hard; and many a time I had come across him glistening with perspiration as he tugged at some heavy bag with all an Englishman's energy when all around were sluggishly looking on. He studiously avoided the woods, though, save when he saw me off upon a ramble; and it was one day when I was standing by Lilla's side at an open window, previous to taking a long walk, that our attention was taken up by high words in the yard close at hand.

That Tom was one of the actors was plain enough, for his words came loud, clear, and angry to where we stood; and it was evident that he was taking the part of one of the Indian girls, who was weeping, probably from blows inflicted by one of her countrymen, whose gallantry is not proverbial.

”You red varmint,” cried Tom fiercely, ”I'll let you know what's what!

We don't strike women in our country--no, not even if they hit us.”

Interested as I was, the recollection of a sharp slap I had heard at home would come to my memory.

”And I tell you what, if you touch her again I'll make that face of yours a prettier colour than it is now.”

”Pray go and tell my father,” whispered Lilla anxiously. ”Quarrels here are very serious sometimes, and end in loss of life.”