`Perhaps you don't know how alarming you are, appearing like this unexpectedly--'
`I! Alarming!' he protested, sincerely vexed and surprised. `I assure you that I am not in the least alarmed myself. A fan is lost; well, it will be found again. But I don't think it is here. It is a fan I am looking for. I cannot understand how Antonia could--Well! Have you found it, amigo ?'
`No, senor ,' said behind Mrs Gould the soft voice of Basilio, the head servant of the Casa. `I don't think the senorita could have left it in this house at all.'
`Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my friend; look for it on the steps, under the gate; examine every flagstone; search for it till I come down again. . . . That fellow' -- he addressed himself in English to Mrs Gould -- `is always stealing up behind one's back on his bare feet.
I set him to look for that fan directly I came in to justify my reappearance, my sudden return.'
He paused and Mrs Gould said, amiably, `You are always welcome.' She paused for a second, too. `But I am waiting to learn the cause of your return.'
Decoud affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance.
`I can't bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause? Yes, there is a cause;there is something else that is lost besides Antonia's favourite fan. As I was walking home after seeing Don Jose and Antonia to their house, the Capataz de Cargadores, riding down the street, spoke to me.'
`Has anything happened to the Violas?' inquired Mrs Gould.
`The Violas? You mean the old Garibaldino who keeps the hotel where the engineers live! Nothing happened there. The Capataz said nothing of them; he only told me that the telegraphist of the Cable Company was walking on the Plaza, bareheaded, looking out for me. This is news from the interior, Mrs Gould. I should rather say rumours of news.'
`Good news?' said Mrs Gould in a low voice.
`Worthless, I should think. But if I must define them, I would say bad.
They are to the effect that a two days' battle had been fought near Sta Marta, and that the Ribierists are defeated. It must have happened a few days ago -- perhaps a week. The rumour has just reached Cayta, and the man in charge of the cable station there has telegraphed the news to his colleague here. We might just as well have kept Barrios in Sulaco.'
`What's to be done now?' murmured Mrs Gould.
`Nothing. He's at sea with the troops. He will get to Cayta in a couple of days' time and learn the news there. What he will do then, who can say?
Hold Cayta? Offer his submission to Montero? Disband his army -- this last most likely, and go himself in one of the O.S.N. Company's steamers, north or south -- to Valparaiso or to San Francisco, no matter where. Our Barrios has a great practice in exiles and repatriations, which mark the points in the political game.'
Decoud, exchanging a steady stare with Mrs Gould, added, tentatively, as it were, `And yet, if we had Barrios with his 2,000 improved rifles here, something could have been done.'
`Montero victorious, completely victorious!' Mrs Gould breathed out in a tone of unbelief.
`A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched in great numbers in such times as these. And even if it were true? Well, let us put things at their worst, let us say it is true.'
`Then everything is lost,' said Mrs Gould, with the calmness of despair.
Suddenly she seemed to divine, she seemed to see Decoud's tremendous excitement under its cloak of studied carelessness. It was, indeed, becoming visible in his audacious and watchful stare, in the curve, half-reckless, half-contemptuous, of his lips. And a French phrase came upon them as if, for this Costaguanero of the Boulevard, that had been the only forcible language:
` Non, Madame. Rien n'est perdu .'
It electrified Mrs Gould out of her benumbed attitude, and she said, vivaciously:
`What would you think of doing?'
But already there was something of mockery in Decoud's suppressed excitement.
`What would you expect a true Costaguanero to do? Another revolution, of course. On my word of honour, Mrs Gould, I believe I am a true hijo del pais , a true son of the country, whatever Father Corbelan may say.
And I'm not so much of an unbeliever as not to have faith in my own ideas, in my own remedies, in my own desires.'
`Yes,' said Mrs Gould, doubtfully.
`You don't seem convinced,' Decoud went on again in French. `Say, then, in my passions.'
Mrs Gould received this addition unflinchingly. To understand it thoroughly she did not require to hear his muttered assurance:
`There is nothing I would not do for the sake of Antonia. There is nothing I am not prepared to undertake. There is no risk I am not ready to run.'
Decoud seemed to find a fresh audacity in this voicing of his thoughts.
`You would not believe me if I were to say that it is the love of the country which--'
She made a sort of discouraged protest with her arm, as if to express that she had given up expecting that motive from anyone.
`A Sulaco revolution,' Decoud pursued in a forcible undertone. `The Great Cause may be served here, on the very spot of its inception, in the place of its birth, Mrs Gould.'
Frowning, and biting her lower lip thoughtfully, she made a step away from the door.
`You are not going to speak to your husband?' Decoud arrested her anxiously.
`But you will need his help?'
`No doubt,' Decoud admitted without hesitation. `Everything turns upon the San Tome mine, but I would rather he didn't know anything as yet of my -- my hopes.'
A puzzled look came upon Mrs Gould's face, and Decoud, approaching, explained confidentially:
`Don't you see, he's such an idealist.'
Mrs Gould flushed pink, and her eyes grew darker at the same time.
`Charley an idealist!' she said, as if to herself, wonderingly. `What on earth do you mean?'
