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The Purple Land

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I was astonished to hear him, but his last words were a mystery to me.

"There is no one in Buenos Ayres to protect her," I said; "I only will
be there as I am here to shield her, and if, as you think, she has an
enemy, he must reckon with me--one who, like that Calixto you speak
of, has a hand quick to strike."

"There spoke the heart of a Blanco!" he exclaimed, clutching my arm,
and then, the boat giving a lurch at that moment, almost dragging me
down in his efforts to steady himself. After another sip of rum he
went on: "But who are you, young sir, if that is not an impertinent
question? Do you possess money, influence, powerful friends, that you
take upon yourself the care of this woman? Is it in your power to
baffle and crush her enemy or enemies, to protect not only her person,
but her property, which, in her absence, will become the prey of
robbers?"

"And who are you, old man?" I returned, unable to give a satisfactory
answer to one of his searching questions, "and why do you ask me these
things? And who is this powerful person you speak of in Buenos Ayres
with some of her blood in his veins, but of whose existence she is
ignorant?"

He shook his head silently, then deliberately proceeded to take out
and light a cigarette. He smoked with a placid enjoyment which made
me think that his refusal of my cigar and his bitter complaints about
the effects of the ship's tossing on him had merely been to get the
bottle of rum out of me. He was evidently a veteran in more senses
than one, and now, finding that I would tell him no more secrets, he
refused to answer any questions. Fearing that I had imprudently told
him too much already, I finally left him and retired to my bunk.

Next morning we arrived at Buenos Ayres, and cast anchor about two
miles from shore, for that was as near the land as we could get.
Presently we were boarded by a Custom House officer, and for some time
longer I was engaged in getting out our luggage and in bargaining with
the captain to put us on shore. When I had completed these arrangements
I was very much surprised to see the cunning old soldier I had talked
with the evening before sitting in the Custom House boat, which was
just putting off from the side. Demetria had been looking on when the
old fellow had left the ship, and she now came to me looking very
excited.

"Richard," she said, "did you notice that man who was a passenger with
us and who has just gone off in the boat? It is Santa Coloma."

"Oh, absurd!" I exclaimed. "I talked with that old man last night for
an hour--an old grey-bearded gaucho, and no more like Santa Coloma
than that sailor."

"I know I am right," she returned. "The General has visited my father
at the _estancia_ and I know him well. He is disguised now and
has made himself look like a peasant, but when he went over the side
into the boat he looked full into my face; I knew him and started,
then he smiled, for he saw that I had recognised him."

The very fact that this common-looking old man had gone on shore in
the Custom House boat proved that he was a person of consequence in
disguise, and I could not doubt that Demetria was right. I felt
excessively annoyed at myself for having failed to penetrate his
disguise; for something of the old Marcos Marcó style of speaking might
very well have revealed his identity if I had only had my wits about
me. I was also very much concerned on Demetria's account, for it seemed
that I had missed finding out something for her which would have been
to her advantage to know. I was ashamed to tell her of that conversation
about a relation in Buenos Ayres, but secretly determined to try and
find Santa Coloma to get him to tell me what he knew.

After landing we put our small luggage into a fly and were driven to
an hotel in Calle Lima, an out-of-the-way place kept by a German; but
I knew the house to be a quiet, respectable one and very moderate in
its charges.

About five o'clock in the afternoon we were together in the sitting-room
on the first floor, looking down on the street from the window, when
a well-appointed carriage with a gentleman and two young ladies in it
drew up before the door.

"Oh, Richard," exclaimed Paquíta in the greatest excitement, "it is
Don Pantaleon Villaverde with his daughters, and they are getting out!"

"Who is Villaverde?" I asked.

"What, do you not know? He is a Judge of First Instance, and his
daughters are my dearest friends. Is it not strange to meet them like
this? Oh, I must see them to ask for _papa_ and _mamita!_" and here she
began to cry.

The waiter came up with a card from the Señor Villaverde requesting
an interview with the Señorita Peralta.

Demetria, who had been trying to soothe Paquíta's intense excitement
and infuse a little courage into her, was too much amazed to speak;
and in another moment our visitors were in the room. Paquíta started
up tearful and trembling; then her two young friends, after staring
at her for a few moments, delivered a screech of astonishment and
rushed into her arms, and all three were locked together for some time
in a triangular embrace.

When the excitement of this tempestuous meeting had spent itself, Señor
Villaverde, who stood looking on with grave, impressive face, spoke
to Demetria, telling her that his old friend, General Santa Coloma,
had just informed him of her arrival in Buenos Ayres and of the hotel
where she was staying. Probably she did not even know who he was, he
said; he was her relation; his mother was a Peralta, a first cousin
of her unhappy father, Colonel Peralta. He had come to see her with
his daughters to invite her to make his house her home during her stay
in Buenos Ayres. He also wished to help her with her affairs, which,
his friend the General had informed him, were in some confusion. He
had, he concluded, many influential friends in the sister city, who
would be ready to assist him in arranging matters for her.

Demetria, recovering from the nervousness she had experienced on finding
that Paquíta's great friends were her visitors, thanked him warmly and
accepted his offer of a home and assistance; then, with a quiet dignity
and self-possession one would hardly expect from a girl coming amongst
fashionable people for the first time in her life, she greeted her
new-found relations and thanked them for their visit.

As they insisted on taking Demetria away with them at once, she left
us to make her preparations, while Paquíta remained conversing with
her friends, having many questions to ask them. She was consumed with
anxiety to know how her family, and especially her father, who made
the domestic laws, now, after so many months, regarded her elopement
and marriage with me. Her friends, however, either knew nothing or
would not tell her what they knew.

Poor Demetria! she had, with no time given her for reflection, taken
the wise course of at once accepting the offer of her influential and
extremely dignified kinsman; but it was hard for her to leave her
friends at such short notice, and when she came back prepared for her
departure the separation tried her severely. With tears in her eyes
she bade Paquíta farewell, but when she took my hand in hers, for some
time her trembling lips refused to speak. Overcoming her emotions by
a great effort, she at length said, addressing her visitors, "For my
escape from a sad and perilous position and for the pleasure of finding
myself here amongst relations, I am indebted to this young friend who
has been a brother to me."

Señor Villaverde listened and bowed towards me, but with no softening
in his stern, calm face, while his cold grey eyes seemed to look
straight through me at something beyond. His manner towards me made
me feel a kind of despair, for how strong must have been his disapproval
of my conduct in running off with his friend's daughter--how great his
indignation against me, when it prevented him from bestowing one smile
or one kind word on me to thank me for all I had done for his kinswoman!
Yet this was only the reflected indignation of my father-in-law.

We went down to the carriage to see them off, and then, finding myself
for a moment by the side of one of the young ladies, I tried to find
out something for myself. "Pray tell me, señorita," I said, "what you
know about my father-in-law. If it is very bad, I promise you my wife
shall not hear a word of it; but it is best that I should know the
truth before meeting him."

A cloud came over her bright, expressive face, while she glanced
anxiously at Paquíta; then, bending towards me, she whispered, "Ah,
my friend, he is implacable! I am so sorry, for Paquíta's sake." And
then, with a smile of irrepressible coquetry, she added, "And for
yours."

The carriage drove away, and Demetria's eyes, looking back at me, were
filled with tears, but in Señor Villaverde's eyes, also glancing back,
there was an expression that boded ill for my future. His feeling was
natural, perhaps, for he was the father of two very pretty girls.

Implacable, and I was now divided from him by no silver or
brick-coloured sea! By returning I had made myself amenable to the
laws I had broken by marrying a girl under age without her father's
consent. The person in England who runs away with a ward in Chancery
is not a greater offender against the law than I was. It was now in
his power to have me punished, to cast me into prison for an indefinite
time, and if not to crush my spirit, he would at least be able to break
the heart of his unhappy daughter. Those wild, troubled days in the
Purple Land now seemed to my mind peaceful, happy days, and the bitter
days with no pleasure in them were only now about to begin. Implacable!

Suddenly looking up, I found Paquíta's violet eyes, full of sad
questioning, fixed on my face.

"Tell me truly, Richard, what have you heard?" she asked.

I forced a smile, and, taking her hand, assured her that I had heard
nothing to cause her any uneasiness. "Come," I said, "let us go in and
prepare to leave town to-morrow. We will go back to the point we started
from--your father's _estancia_, for the sooner this meeting you
are thinking about so anxiously is over the better will it be for all
of us."




APPENDIX



HISTORY OF THE BANDA ORIENTÁL


The country, called in this work the Purple Land, was discovered by
Magellan in the year 1500, and he called the hill, or mountain, which
gives its name to the capital, Monte Vidi. He described it as a
hat-shaped mountain; and it is probable that, four centuries ago, the
tall, conical hat, which is worn to this day by women in South Wales,
was a common form in Spain and Portugal.

In due time settlements were made; but the colonists of those days
loved gold and adventure above everything, and, finding neither in the
Banda, they little esteemed it. For two centuries it was neglected by
its white possessors, while the cattle they had imported continued to
multiply, and, returning to a feral life, overran the country in amazing
numbers.

The heroic period in South American history then passed away. El Dorado,
the Spaniard's New Jerusalem, has changed into a bank of malarious
mist and a cloud of mosquitoes, Amazons, giants, pigmies.

"The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders,"

when closely looked for, turned out to be Red Indians of a type which
varied but little throughout the entire vast continent. Wanderers from
the Old World grew weary of seeking the tropics only to sink into
flowery graves. They turned away sick at heart from the great desolation
where the splendid empire of the Children of the Sun had so lately
flourished. The accumulated treasures had been squandered. The cruel
crusades of the Paulists against the Jesuit missions had ceased for
the inhuman slave-hunters had utterly destroyed the smiling gardens
in the wilderness. A remnant of the escaped converts had gone back to
a wild life in the woods, and the Fathers, who had done their Master's
work so well, drifted away to mingle in other scenes or die of broken
hearts. Then, in the sober eighteenth century, when the disillusion
was complete, Spain woke up to the fact that in the temperate part of
the continent, shared by her with Portugal, she possessed a new bright
little Spain worth cultivating. About the same time, Portugal discovered
that the acquisition of this pretty country, with its lovely Lusitanian
climate, would nicely round off her vast possessions on the south side.
Forthwith these two great colonising powers fell to fighting over the
Banda, where there were no temples of beaten gold, or mythical races
of men, or fountains of everlasting youth. The quarrel might have
continued to the end of time, so languidly was it conducted by both
parties, had not great events come to swallow up the little ones.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the English invasion burst
like a sudden terrible thunderstorm on the country. Montevideo on the
east and Buenos Ayres on the west side of the sea-like river were
captured and lost again. The storm was soon over, but it had the effect
of precipitating the revolution of 1810, which presently ended in the
loss to Spain of all her American possessions. These changes brought
only fresh wars and calamities to the long-suffering Banda. The ancient
feud between Spain and Portugal descended to the new Brazilian Empire
and the new Argentine Confederation, and these claimants contended for
the country until 1828, when they finally agreed to let it govern
itself in its own fashion. After thus acquiring its independence, the
little Belgium of the New World cast off its pretty but hated
appellation of Cisplatina and resumed its old joyous name of Banda
Orientál. With light hearts the people then proceeded to divide
themselves into two political parties--Whites and Reds. Endless
struggles for mastery ensued, in which the Argentines and Brazilians,
forgetting their solemn compact, were for ever taking sides. But of
these wars of crows and pies it would be idle to say more, since, after
going on for three-quarters of a century, they are not wholly ended
yet. The rambles and adventures described in the book take us back to
the late 'sixties or early 'seventies of the last century, when the
country was still in the condition in which it had remained since the
colonial days, when the ten years' siege of Montevideo was not yet a
remote event, and many of the people one met had had a part in it.

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