Rainbow's End Part 44

There were soldiers everywhere, but beyond an indifferent challenge at the outer blockhouse, a perfunctory question or two, Narciso and Juan Villar experienced no trouble whatever in pa.s.sing the lines.

Discipline, never strict at best, was extremely lax at the brick fortinas along the roads, and, since these two refugees were too poor to warrant search, they were waved onward by the sentries. They obeyed silently; in aimless bewilderment they shuffled along toward the heart of the city. Almost before they realized it they had run the gauntlet and had joined that army of misery, fifteen thousand strong. The hand of Spain had closed over them.

XXIV

ROSA

"Look!" Jacket clutched at O'Reilly and pointed a shaking finger. "More beggars! Cristo! And those little children!" The boy tried to laugh, but his voice cracked nervously. "Are they children, or gourds with legs under them?"

O'Reilly looked, then turned his eyes away. He and Jacket had reached the heart of Matanzas and were facing the public square, the Plaza de la Libertad it was called. O'Reilly knew the place well; every building that flanked it was familiar to him, from the vast, rambling Governor's Palace to the ornate Casino Espanol and the Grand Hotel, and time was when he had been a welcome visitor at all of them. But things were different now. Gone were the customary crowds of well-dressed, well-fed citizens; gone the rows of carriages which at this hour of the day were wont to circle the Plaza laden with the aristocracy of the city; gone was that air of cheerfulness and substance which had lent distinction to the place. Matanzas appeared poor and squalid, depressingly wretched; its streets were foul and the Plaza de la Libertad--grim mockery of a name--was crowded with a throng such as it had never held in O'Reilly's time, a throng of people who were, without exception, gaunt, listless, ragged. There was no afternoon parade of finery, no laughter, no noise; the benches were full, but their occupants were silent, too sick or too weak to move. Nor were there any romping children. There were, to be sure, vast numbers of undersized figures in the square, but one needed to look twice to realize that they were not pygmies or wizened little old folks. It was not strange that Jacket had compared them to gourds with legs, for all were naked, and most of them had bodies swollen into the likeness of pods or calabashes. They looked peculiarly grotesque with their spidery legs and thin faces.

O'Reilly pa.s.sed a damp hand across his eyes. "G.o.d!" he breathed.

"She--she's one of these!"

He had not penetrated even thus far into the city without receiving a hint of what conditions must be, for in the outlying streets he had seen sights and smelled odors that had sickened him; but now that he was face to face with the worst, now that he breathed the very breath of misery, he could scarcely credit what he saw. A stench, indescribably nauseating, a.s.sailed him and Jacket as they mingled with the crowd, for as yet their nostrils were unused to poverty and filth.

It was the rancid odor that arises from unwashed, unhealthy bodies, and it testified eloquently to the living-conditions of the prisoners.

Hollow eyes and hopeless faces followed the two new-comers as they picked their way slowly along.

The reconcentrados overran Matanzas in an unclean swarm; streets and plazas were congested with them, for no attempt was made to confine them to their quarters. Morning brought them streaming down from the suburban slopes where they lived, evening sent them winding back; their days were spent in an aimless search for food. They s.n.a.t.c.hed at crumbs and combed the gutters for crusts. How they managed to exist, whence came the food that kept life in their miserable bodies, was a mystery, even to the citizens of the city; no organized effort had been made to care for them and there was insufficient surplus food for half their number. Yet somehow they lived and lingered on.

Of course the city was not entirely peopled by the starving--as a matter of fact they formed scarcely one-fifth of the normal civil population--and the life of the city was going on a good deal as usual.

Stores were open, at least there was a daily train from Habana, and the barracks were full of Spanish troops. It was from off the wastage of this normal population that these fifteen thousand prisoners were forced to live. Even this wastage was woefully inadequate, merely serving to prolong suffering by making starvation slower.

At the time of O'Reilly's arrival the sight presented by these innocent victims of war was appalling; it roused in him a dull red rage at the power which had wrought this crime and at the men who permitted it to continue. Spain was a Christian nation, he reflected; she had set up more crosses than any other, and yet beneath them she had butchered more people than all the nations of the earth combined. This monstrous, coldly calculating effort to destroy the entire Cuban people seemed to him the blackest infamy of all, and he wondered if it would be allowed to succeed.

Fortunately for the two friends, General Betancourt's generosity served to relieve them from any immediate danger of starvation. After making a few purchases and eating with the utmost frugality, they began their search. Later, they stretched themselves out to sleep on the stones beneath the portales of the railroad station.

They spent a horrid, harrowing night, for now the general distress was brought home to them more poignantly than ever. At dawn they learned that these people were actually dying of neglect. The faint light betrayed the presence of new corpses lying upon the station flagstones.

From those still living, groans, sighs, sick mutterings rose until O'Reilly finally dragged his youthful companion out of the place.

"I can't stand that," he confessed. "I can't sleep when people are starving to death alongside of me. This money burns my pocket. I--I--"

Jacket read his purpose and laid a detaining hand upon his arm.

"It will save OUR lives, too," he said, simply.

"Bah! We are men. There are women and children yonder--"

But Jacket's sensibilities were calloused, it seemed. "Of what use would your few pesetas be among so many?" he inquired. "G.o.d has willed this, and He knows what He is doing. Besides, your 'pretty one' is probably as hungry as are these people. No doubt we shall find that she, too, is starving."

O'Reilly slowly withdrew his hand from his pocket. "Yes! It's Rosa's money. But--come; I can't endure this."

He led the way back to the Plaza of Liberty and there on an iron bench they waited for the full day. They were very tired, but further sleep was impossible, for the death-wagons rumbled by on their way to collect the bodies of those who had died during the night.

Neither the man nor the boy ever wholly lost the nightmare memory of the next few days, for their search took them into every part of the reconcentrado districts. What they beheld aged them. Day after day, from dawn till dark, they wandered, peering into huts, staring into faces, asking questions until they were faint from fatigue and sick with disappointment.

As time pa.s.sed and they failed to find Rosa Varona a terrible apprehension began to weigh O'Reilly down; his face grew old and drawn, his shoulders sagged, his limbs began to drag. It was all that Jacket could do to keep him going. The boy, now that there was actual need of him, proved a perfect jewel; his optimism never failed, his faith never faltered, and O'Reilly began to feel a dumb grat.i.tude at having the youngster by his side.

Jacket, too, became thin and gray about the lips. But he complained not at all and he laughed a great deal. To him the morrow was always another day of brilliant promise toward which he looked with never-failing eagerness; and not for a single moment did he question the ultimate success of their endeavor. Such an example did much for the older man. Together they practised the strictest, harshest economy, living on a few cents a day, while they methodically searched the city from limit to limit.

At first O'Reilly concerned himself more than a little with the problem of escape, but as time wore on he thought less and less about that. Nor did he have occasion to waste further concern regarding his disguise.

That it was perfect he proved when several of his former acquaintances pa.s.sed him by and when, upon one occasion, he came face to face with old Don Mario de Castano. Don Mario had changed; he was older, his flesh had softened, and it hung loosely upon his form. He appeared worried, hara.s.sed, and O'Reilly recalled rumors that the war had ruined him. The man's air of dejection seemed to bear out the story.

They had been enemies, nevertheless O'Reilly felt a sudden impulse to make himself known to the Spaniard and to appeal directly for news of Rosa's fate. But Don Mario, he remembered in time, had a reputation for vindictiveness, so he smothered the desire. One other encounter O'Reilly had reason to remember.

It so chanced that one day he and Jacket found themselves in the miserable rabble which a.s.sembled at the railroad station to implore alms from the incoming pa.s.sengers of the Habana train. Few people were traveling these days, and they were, for the most part, Spanish officers to whom the sight of starving country people was no novelty.

Now and then, however, there did arrive visitors from whom the spectacle of so much wretchedness wrung a contribution, hence there was always an expectant throng at the depot. On this occasion O'Reilly was surprised to hear the piteous whines for charity in the name of G.o.d turn suddenly into a subdued but vicious mutter of rage. Hisses were intermingled with vituperations, then the crowd fell strangely silent, parting to allow the pa.s.sage of a great, thick-set man in the uniform of a Colonel of Volunteers. The fellow was unusually swarthy and he wore a black scowl upon his face, while a long puckering scar the full length of one cheek lifted his mouth into a crooked sneer and left exposed a glimpse of wolfish teeth.

O'Reilly was at a loss to fathom this sudden alteration of att.i.tude, the whistle of indrawn breaths and the whispered curses, until he heard some one mutter the name, "Cobo." Then indeed he started and stiffened in his tracks. He fixed a fascinated stare upon the fellow.

Colonel Cobo seemed no little pleased by the reception he created. With his chest arched and his black eyes gleaming malevolently he swaggered through the press, clicking his heels noisily upon the stone flags.

When he had gone Jacket voiced a vicious oath.

"So that is the butcher of babies!" exclaimed the boy. "Well, now, I should enjoy cutting his heart out."

O'Reilly's emotions were not entirely unlike those of his small companion. His lips became dry and white as he tried to speak.

"What a brute! That face--Ugh!"

He found himself shaking weakly, and discovered that a new and wholly unaccountable feeling of discouragement had settled upon him. He tried manfully to shake it off, but somehow failed, for the sight of Rosa's arch-enemy and the man's overbearing personality had affected him queerly. Cobo's air of confidence and authority seemed to emphasize O'Reilly's impotence and bring it forcibly home to him. To think of his l.u.s.tful persecution of Rosa Varona, moreover, terrified him. The next day he resumed his hut-to-hut search, but with a listlessness that came from a firm conviction that once again he was too late.

That afternoon found the two friends among the miserable hovels which encircled the foot of La c.u.mbre, about the only quarter they had not explored. Below lay San Severino, the execution-place; above was the site of the old Verona home. More than once on his way about the city O'Reilly had lifted his eyes in the direction of the latter, feeling a great hunger to revisit the scene of his last farewell to Rosa, but through fear of the melancholy effect it would have upon him he had thus far resisted the impulse. To-day, however, he could no longer fight the morbid desire and so, in spite of Jacket's protest at the useless expenditure of effort, he set out to climb the hill. Of course the boy would not let him go alone.

Little was said during the ascent. The La c.u.mbre road seemed very long and very steep. How different the last time O'Reilly had swung up it!

The climb had never before tired him as it did now, and he reasoned that hunger must have weakened him even more than he realized. Jacket felt the exertion, too; he was short of breath and he rested frequently. O'Reilly saw that the boy's bare, brown legs had grown bony since he had last noticed them, and he felt a sudden pang at having brought the little fellow into such a plight as this.

"Well, hombre," he said when they paused to rest, "I'm afraid we came too late. I'm afraid we're licked."

Jacket nodded listlessly; his optimism, too, was gone. "They must all be dead or we would have found them before this," said he. When O'Reilly made no answer he continued, "It is time we thought of getting away from here, eh?"

Johnnie was sitting with his face in his hands. Without lifting his head he inquired: "How are we going to get away? It is easy enough to get into Matanzas, but--" He shrugged hopelessly.

From where the two sat they could see on the opposite hillside a section of the ditch and the high barbed-wire fence which girdled the city and made of it a huge corral. s.p.a.ced at regular intervals along the intrenchments were slow-moving, diminutive figures, sentries on their well-worn paths.

Jacket brightened at the thought of escape. "Ho! I'll bet we can find a hole somewhere," said he. "We're not like these others. They haven't the spirit to try." There was a moment of silence, and then: "Caramba!

You remember those jutias we ate? They were strong, but I would enjoy the smell of one now. Eh? Another week of this and we shall be living on garbage like the rest of these poor people."

Leaving Jacket to take his time, Johnnie completed the climb alone, meditating upon the boy's words. "The spirit to try!" Where had his spirit gone, he wondered. Perhaps it had been crushed beneath the weight of misery he had beheld; surely he had seen enough. Hourly contact with sickness and misfortune on such a gigantic scale was enough to chill any one's hopes, and although his sensibilities had been dulled, his apprehensions had been quickened hour by hour. Now that he looked the matter squarely in the face, it seemed absurd to believe that a tender girl like Rosa Varona could long have withstood the hards.h.i.+ps of this hideous place; stronger people than she had succ.u.mbed, by the hundreds. Even now the hospitals were full, the sick lay untended in their hovels. No one, so far as O'Reilly knew, had undertaken to estimate how fast they were dying or the number of dead which had already ridden out of Matanzas in those rumbling wagons, but there were many. What chance was there that Rosa had not been among the latter? Better by far had she remained among the empty fields and the barren slopes of the Pan de Matanzas, for there at least the soil held roots and the trees bore fruits or berries, while here was nothing but gaunt famine and grinning disease.

As he breasted the summit of La c.u.mbre, O'Reilly beheld at some distance a bent figure of want. It was a negro woman, grubbing in the earth with a sharpened stick. After a suspicious scrutiny of him she resumed her digging.

Nothing but a heap of stones and plaster remained of the Varona home.

The grounds, once beautiful even when neglected as in Dona Isabel's time, were now a scene of total desolation. A few orange-trees, to be sure, remained standing, and although they were cool and green to look at, they carried no fruit and the odor of their blooms was a trial and a mockery to the hungry visitor. The evidences of Cueto's vandalism affected O'Reilly deeply; they brought him memories more painful than he had antic.i.p.ated. Although the place was well-nigh unrecognizable, nevertheless it cried aloud of Rosa, and the unhappy lover could barely control the emotions it awakened. It was indeed a morbid impulse which had brought him thither, but now that he was here he could not leave.

Unconsciously his feet turned toward the ancient quarry which had formed the sunken garden--his and Rosa's trysting-place.

O'Reilly desired above all things to be alone at this moment, and so he was annoyed to discover that another person was before him--a woman, evidently some miserable pacifico like himself. She, too, appeared to be looking for roots, and he almost stumbled over her as he brushed through the guava-bushes fringing the depression.