The Marquis ended his bow, and went back to camp. Next week there came an Indian soldier to Dolores with a box of island pearls; they were large as grapeshot, and went thrice about her waist. But the General no longer contradicted her engagement to his nephew.
V.
The General had never known women; he had only known what men (and women, too) say of women. At Paris, and Madrid, he had seen his friends see dancers, figurantes; he did not confound other women with these, but he had known none other. Of girls, in particular, he was ignorant. A man of Latin race never sees a girl; in America, North America, it is different, and one sometimes wonders if we justify it.
Some weeks after the General got back to his camp (which was high up amid the huge mountain, the first mainland that Columbus saw, which fends the Gulf of Paria from the sea), he was astounded by the appearance of no less a person than his nephew Ramon. He had broken with the royal cause, he said, and come to seek service beneath his uncle. He did not say what statement he had left behind him in Carácas—no explanation was necessary in the then Venezuela for joining any war—but how he had justified his delaying his coming nuptials with Dolores. For he loved her, this young fellow; yet he said—allowed it to be said—that in the process de se ranger, in the process of arrangement, for his bride, that she might find her place unoccupied, certain other arrangements had been necessary which took time.
He did not tell this story to his uncle, who took him and sought to make a soldier of him. Not this story; but he told him that he loved Dolores; and his uncle—was he not twenty years younger?—believed him. Twenty years, or fifteen; ’tis little difference when you pass the decade.
But the General found him hard material to work up. He was ready enough at a private brawl; ready enough, if the humor struck him, to go at the enemy; but not to lead his men there. And his men were readier to gamble with him than to follow him; though brave enough, in a way.
Yet the General Marquis blinded his faults—aye, and paid his debts—for when he lost at “pharaon” a certain pearl he wore, the uncle bought it back for him, with a caution to risk his money, not his honor; at which the young captain grit his teeth, and would have challenged any but a creditor. And when a certain girl, a Spanish woman, followed him to camp, del Torre knew of it, and helped Ramon to bid her go; and if the General thought the worse of him, he did not think Dolores loved him less; for was not Sebastian himself brought up on that cruel half-truth that some women still do their sex the harm to make a whole one? that women love a rake reformed. Then came a battle, and both were wounded, and more concessions from his Catholic Majesty; and in their wake the wounded gentlemen went back to Carácas.
The General’s hair was grayer, and in that stay again he saw Dolores only once, and that was in church. At mass, high mass, Te Deum, for the Catholic Majesty’s concessions, Don Ramon stood behind her chair; and del Torre saw them from a pillar opposite, and again the girl countess blushed. And after mass the new Archbishop met him in the street and talked—of him, and of his ward, and of Don Ramon.
“He is a graceless reprobate,” said this peon-priest.
The Marquis sighed. “A soldier—for a brave man there is always hope.”