The Golden Magnet Part 14

"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."

Crack! There was the sound of a blow followed by a woman's shriek of pain.

"Why, you cowardly hound!" I heard Tom shout. "You dare hit _her_, then--you who sneaked off along with your grand Spanish Don when the boat was upset, and left young miss to drown! You're a brave one, you are, and then you all go and take the credit, when it was my Mas'r Harry who saved her. Take that, you beggar, and that--and that!"

Tom's words were accompanied by the sounds of heavy blows; and on leaping out of the window I came upon him, squaring away, and delivering no meanly-planted blows upon the chests and faces of a couple of Indians, while a woman crouched, trembling and weeping, and writhing with pain, upon the ground.

"That's a settler for you anyhow!" said Tom, as he sent one of his adversaries staggering back for a few yards, to fall heavily, when the other retreated, but only for both to out with a knife each, and again come forward to the attack.

But my appearance upon the scene stayed them, and they slunk scowling away.

"I'll knock the wind out of some on 'em, Mas'r Harry, spite of their knives," cried Tom excitedly. "I'll let 'em know how an Englishman serves them that knocks women about. Hit her with a great thick stick, he did--cuss him! I'll let him know!"

"Be quiet, Tom! Are you mad?" I said, catching him by the collar, for he was squaring away at the Indians, who were a couple of dozen yards away.

"What did he go knocking her about for? Yah! Mas'r Harry, they're a rotten lot out here, and the country's a thousand times too good for them!"

By degrees I got Tom cooled down, and into the house, and on returning I found Lilla standing watching for me at the window, but only to gaze at me with a strange, troubled look, half pain, half pleasure, and before I could speak she had fled.

But an hour had not pa.s.sed before I came upon her again, speaking anxiously to Tom. They did not see me approach, and as I was close up I was just in time to hear Tom exclaim:

"But he did, Miss, and stuck to you when all the rest had got ash.o.r.e-- the Don and all."

Lilla gave a faint shriek as I spoke; and then darting at me a look of reproach, she hurried away, leaving me excited and troubled; for she had learned a secret that I had intended should not come to her ears.

"How dare you go chattering about like that?" I cried fiercely to Tom, for I was anxious to have some one to blame.

"Don't care, Mas'r Harry," he said sulkily. "Miss Lilla asked me, and I never told her only the truth. They are a cowardly set of hounds, the whole lot of 'em; and I'll take any couple of 'em, one down and t'other come on, with a hand tied behind me."

"We shall have to go, Tom," I said bitterly. "What with your brawls and the mischief you have made, this will be no place for us."

I spoke with gloomy forebodings in my mind, for I could not but think that trouble was to be our lot. Poor and without prospects, and with a rich and favoured rival, what was I to hope for? Indeed I felt ready to despair.

"Say, Mas'r Harry," said Tom penitently, "'tain't so bad as that, is it?"

"Bad! Yes, Tom," I said gloomily, and I turned and left him.

It was a day or two after. I had only seen Lilla at meals, to find her shy and _distraite_. She hardly seemed to notice me, but I had the satisfaction of seeing that Garcia fared no better.

But he smiled pleasantly, evidently to conceal the rage that burned within him, and more than once there was a hateful glare in his eye that evidently boded no good to those who crossed his path; and it seemed as if I had not only crossed his path, but now stood right in his way.

We had just finished the mid-day meal. Garcia had been with us, and on Lilla rising he had followed her to the door; but she had turned from him with a look of contempt, when, white with pa.s.sion, he had been unable to control himself, but dashed out of the place, muttering fiercely.

My uncle had seen all, and his countenance lowered, but for a while he did not speak. He walked to a closet, took out a cigar, and sat smoking till Mrs Landell had left the room, when, beckoning me to him, he pointed to a chair, and then, as soon as I was seated, he gave utterance to what was in his mind.

"Harry, my lad," he said, "I am a plain, straightforward fellow, and I like frankness. I'm going now to speak very plainly to you, for I'm not blind. You've taken a fancy to little Lill."

I rose, holding by the back of my chair, blushed, blundered, and then stood without a word.