Rainbow's End. Rex Beach
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"Idiot!" stormed the fat man. "Better that you gave her to the sharks below San Severino. There is no law, no safety for women outside of the cities. The island is in anarchy. These patriots you talk about are the blacks, the mulattoes, the—lowest, laziest savages in Cuba."
"Please! Don Mario!" the girl pleaded. "I cannot marry you, for—I love another."
"Eh?"
"I love another. I'm betrothed to O'Reilly, the American—and he's coming back to marry me."
De Castano twisted himself laboriously out of his chair and waddled toward the door. He was purple with rage and mortification. On the threshold he paused to wheeze: "Very well, then. Go! I'm done with both of you. I would have lent you a hand with this rascal Cueto, but now he will fall heir to your entire property. Well, it is a time for bandits! I—I—" Unable to think of a parting speech sufficiently bitter to match his disappointment, Don Mario plunged out into the sunlight, muttering and stammering to himself.
Within an hour the twins were on their way up the Yumuri, toward the home of Asensio and Evangelina; for it was thither that they naturally turned. It was well that they had made haste, for as they rode down into the valley, up the other side of the hill from Matanzas came a squad of the Guardia Civil, and at its head rode Pancho Cueto.
V
A CRY FROM THE WILDERNESS
New York seemed almost like a foreign city to Johnnie O'Reilly when he stepped out into it on the morning after his arrival. For one thing it was bleak and cold: the north wind, hailing direct from Baffin's Bay, had teeth, and it bit so cruelly that he was glad when he found shelter in the building which housed the offices of the Carter Importing Company. The tropics had thinned O'Reilly's blood, for the Cuban winds bear a kiss instead of a sting; therefore he paused in the lower hallway, jostled by the morning crowds, and tried to warm himself. The truth is O'Reilly was not only cold, but frightened.
He was far from weak-hearted. In fact, few O'Reillys were that, and Johnnie had an ingrained self-assurance which might have been mistaken for impudence, but for the winning smile that went with it. Yet all the way from Havana he had seen in his mind's eye old Sam Carter intrenched behind his flat-topped desk, and that picture had more than once caused him to forget the carefully rehearsed speech in which he intended to resign his position as an employee and his prospects as a son-in-law.
That desk of Mr. Carter's was always bare and orderly, cleared for action, like the deck of a battle-ship, and over it many engagements had been fought, for the man behind it never shirked a conflict. His was a vigorous and irascible temperament, compounded of old-fashioned, slow-burning black powder and nitroglycerine—a combination of incalculable destructive power. It was a perilously unstable mixture, tool, at times nothing less than a flame served to ignite it; on other occasions the office force pussy-footed past Carter's door on felt soles, and even then the slightest jar often caused the untoward thing to let go. In either event there was a deafening roar, much smoke, and a deal of damage. O'Reilly felt sure that whatever the condition of Mr. Carter's digestion or the serenity of his mind at the beginning of their interview, the news he had to impart would serve as an effective detonator, after which it would be every man for himself. It was not the effect of his report concerning the firm's unprofitable Cuban connections which O'Reilly feared would cause the decks to heave and the ship to rock—Samuel Carter could take calmly the most disturbing financial reverse—it was the blow to his pride at learning that anybody could prefer another girl to his daughter. Johnnie shook his shoulders and stamped his feet, but the chill in his bones refused to go.
He did gain courage, however, by thinking of Rosa Varona as he had last seen her, with arms outstretched, with eyes tear-filled, with yearning lips aquiver at his going. The picture warmed him magically, and it was with a restored determination to make a clean breast of the matter and face the worst that he took the elevator.
The office force of the Carter Importing Company looked up when the firm's Cuban representative entered the door, but its personnel having changed as the result of one of those periodical disruptions that occurred in the inner office, he was not recognized until he presented himself to Mr. Slack, Samuel Carter's private and intimidated secretary.
Mr. Slack smiled wanly, and extended a clammy, nerveless hand as cold and limber as a dead fish.
"You're expected," said he. "Mr. Carter is waiting to see you before leaving for California."
"Seeing me won't make his trip any pleasanter," O'Reilly said, somberly.
"We were afraid you wouldn't get out of Cuba; thought we might have to get the American consul at work."
"Really? I didn't know I was so important."
"Oh, you're the office pet, and well you know it." Mr. Slack's pleasantry was tinged with envy, for he had never been able to appreciate O'Reilly. "Conditions are bad, eh?"
"Yes. Anybody can leave," the other told him. "It's getting back that's difficult. The Spaniards don't like us, and I dare say they have good reason, with all this talk of intervention and the secret help we're lending the Insurrectos. They held me up in Havana; tried to prove I was a spy. They were positively peeved when they failed. Snippy people, those Spaniards."
"Well, I'll tell Mr. Carter you're here." The secretary glided unobtrusively toward the private office, disappeared, glided softly into view again, and waggled a boneless forefinger invitingly. O'Reilly went to meet his employer as a man marches to execution.
His heart sank further at the welcome he received, for the importer gave him a veritable embrace; he patted him on the back and inquired three times as to his health. O'Reilly was anything but cold now; he was perspiring profusely, and he felt his collar growing limp. To shatter this old man's eager hopes would be like kicking a child in the face. Carter had never been so enthusiastic, so demonstrative; there was something almost theatrical in his greeting. It dismayed O'Reilly immensely to realize what a hold he must have upon his employer's affections. Although the latter had a reputation for self-control, he appeared to be in a perfect flutter now. He assumed a boisterousness which seemed strained and wholly out of keeping with the circumstances. His actions vaguely reminded the younger man of an ambling draft-horse trying to gallop; and when, for the fourth time, Mr. Carter inquired solicitously concerning his visitor's well-being, Johnnie's dismay turned to amazement. With a heavy playfulness Mr. Carter at length remarked:
"Well, my boy, you made a fizzle of it, didn't you?" The tone was almost complimentary.
"Yes, sir, I'm a bright and shining failure," O'Reilly acknowledged, hopefully.
"Now, don't 'yes, sir' me. We're friends, aren't we? Good! Understand, I don't blame you in the least—it's that idiotic revolution that spoiled our business. I can't understand those people. Lord! You did splendidly, under the circumstances."
"They have reason enough to revolt—oppression, tyranny, corruption." O'Reilly mumbled the familiar words in a numb paralysis at Mr. Carter's jovial familiarity.
"All Latin countries are corrupt," announced the importer—"always have been and always will be. They thrive under oppression. Politics is purely a business proposition with those people. However, I dare say this uprising won't last long."
O'Reilly welcomed this trend of the conversation; anything was better than fulsome praise, and the discussion would delay the coming crash. It seemed strange, however, that Samuel Carter should take time to discourse about generalities. Johnnie wondered why the old man didn't get down to cases.
"It's more than an uprising, sir," he said. "The rebels have overrun the eastern end of the island, and when I left Maceo and Gomez were sweeping west."
"Bah! It takes money to run a war."
"They have money," desperately argued O'Reilly. "Marti raised more than a million dollars,