“A woman, sir,” said my warrior, with supreme disgust. “Gave her a kiss and ten dollars to undo the front door, and then he was off! He daren’t go to the stables to get a horse, so he was forced to limp away on his game leg. A plucky one he is, too,” he concluded.
“Poor old Johnny!” said I. “You didn’t go after him?”
“No time, sir. Couldn’t tire the horses. Besides, when he’d once got home, he’s got a dozen men there, and they’d have kept us all night. Well, sir, I must be off. Any answer for the colonel? He’ll be outside the Golden House by eleven, sir, and Mr. Carr won’t get in if he comes after that.”
“Tell him to rely on me,” I answered. But for all that I didn’t mean to shoot Johnny on sight. So, much perturbed in spirit, I set off to the barracks, wondering when Johnny would get to Whittingham, and whether he would fall into the colonel’s hands outside the Golden House. It struck me as unpleasantly probable that he might come and spoil the harmony of my evening; if he came there first, the conspiracy would probably lose my aid at an early moment! What would happen to me I didn’t know. But, as I took off my coat in the lobby, I bent down as if to tie a shoestring, and had one more look at my revolver.
CHAPTER IX. — A SUPPER PARTY.
I shall never forget that supper as long as I live. Considered merely as a social gathering it would be memorable enough, for I never before or since sat at meat with ten such queer customers as my hosts of that evening. The officers of the Aureataland Army were a very mixed lot—two or three Spanish-Americans, three or four Brazilians, and the balance Americans of the type their countrymen are least proud of. If there was an honest man among them he sedulously concealed his title to distinction; I know there wasn’t a sober one. The amount of liquor consumed was portentous; and I gloated with an unholy joy as I saw man after man rapidly making himself what diplomatists call a quantiti negligiable. The conversation needed all the excuse the occasion could afford, and the wit would have appeared unduly coarse in a common pot-house. All this might have passed from my memory, or blended in a subdued harmony with my general impression of Aureataland; but the peculiar position in which I stood gave to my mind an unusual activity of perception. Among this band of careless, drunken revelers I sat vigilant, restless, and impatient; feigning to take a leading part in their dissolute hilarity, I was sober, collected, and alert to my very finger-tips. I anxiously watched their bearing and expression. I led them on to speak of the President, rejoicing when I elicited open murmurs and covert threats at his base ingratitude to the men on whose support his power rested. They had not been paid for six months, and were ripe for any mischief. I was more than once tempted to forestall the colonel and begin the revolution on my own account; only my inability to produce before their eyes any arguments of the sort they would listen to restrained me.
Eleven o’clock had come and gone. The senior captain had proposed the President’s health. It was drunk in sullen silence; I was the only man who honored it by rising from his seat.
The major had proposed the army, and they had drunk deep to their noble selves. A young man of weak expression and quavering legs had proposed “The commerce of Aureataland,” coupled with the name of Mr. John Martin, in laudatory but incoherent terms, and I was on my legs replying. Oh, that speech of mine! For discursiveness, for repetition, for sheer inanity, I suppose it has never been equaled. I droned steadily away, interrupted only by cries for fresh supplies of wine; as I went on the audience paid less and less attention. It was past twelve. The well of my eloquence was running drier and drier, and yet no sound outside! I wondered how long they would stand it and how long I could stand it. At 12.15 I began my peroration. Hardly had I done so, when one of the young men started in a gentle voice an utterly indescribable ditty. One by one they took it up, till the rising tide of voices drowned my fervent periods. Perforce I stopped. They were all on their feet now. Did they mean to break up? In despair at the idea I lifted up my voice, loud and distinct (the only distinct voice left in the room), in the most shameful verse of that shameful composition, and seizing my neighbor’s hand began to move slowly round the table. The move was successful. Each man followed suit, and the whole party, kicking back their chairs, revolved with lurching steps round the dibris of empty bottles and cigar ashes.