“The United States is very important to us; we have had to depend almost entirely on the New York Junta for our life. We have hope, too, in General Grant. Finally your country, that was so successful in its liberation, will understand us completely, and sweep Spain over the sea. But, until that comes, we need only money and courage in our, in Cuban, hearts. You are, I understand from Andrés, rich; and you are generous, you will give?”
That direct question, together with its hint at the personal unimportance of his attachment to a cause of pure justice, filled Charles with both resentment and discomfort. He replied stiffly, in halting but adequate Spanish, that there had been a misunderstanding: “I am not rich; the money I have you would think nothing—it might buy a stand or two of rifles, but no more. What 79 I had wanted to spend was myself, my belief in Cuba. It seemed to me that might be worth something—” he stopped, in the difficulty of giving expression to his deep convictions; and Andrés warmly grasped his hand. He held Charles’ palm and addressed his brother in a passionate flood of protest and assertion: Charles Abbott, his dear friend, was as good a patriot as any Escobar, and they should all embrace him in gratitude and welcome; he was, if not the gold of the United States, its unselfish and devoted heart; his presence here, his belief in them, was an indication of what must follow.
“If he were killed,” Andrés explained. “That alone would bring us an army; the indignation of his land would fall like a mountain on our enemies.”
This, giving Charles a fresh view of his usefulness, slightly cooled his ardor; he was willing to accept it, in his exalted state he would make any sacrifice for the ideal that had possessed him; but there was an acceptance of brutal unsentimental fact in the Latin fibre of the Escobars foreign to his own more romantic conceptions. Vincente wasn’t much carried away by the possibility Andrés revealed.
“He’d be got out of the way privately,” he explained 80 in his drained voice; “polite letters and no more, regrets, would be exchanged. The politicians of Washington are not different from those of Cuba. If he is wise he will see Havana as an idler. Even you, Andrés, do not know yet what is waiting for you. It is one thing to conspire in a balcony on the Prado and another to lie in the marshes of Camagüey. You cannot realize how desperate Spain is with the debt left from her wars with Morocco and Chile and Peru. Cuba, for a number of years, has been her richest possession. While the Spaniards were paying taxes of three dollars and twenty some cents, we, in Cuba, were paying six dollars and sixty-nine. After our declaration of independence at Manzanillo—” an eloquent pause left his hearers to the contemplation of what had followed.
“You know how it has gone with us,” Vincente continued, almost exclusively to the younger Escobar. “Carlos Cespedes left his practice of the law at Bayamo for a desperate effort with less than a hundred and thirty men. But they were successful, and in a few weeks we had fifteen thousand, with the constitution of a republican government drawn. We ended slavery,” here, for a breath, he addressed Charles Abbott. “But in that,” he specified, “we were different from 81 you. In the United States slavery was considered as only a moral wrong. Your Civil War was, after all, an affair of philanthropy; while we freed the slaves for economic reasons.
“Well, our struggle went on,” he returned to Andrés, “and we were victorious, with, at the most, fifty thousand men against how many? One, two, hundred thousand. And we began to be recognized abroad, by Bolivia and Columbia and the Mexican Congress. The best Cubans, those like ourselves, were in sympathy with the insurrection. Everything was bright, the climate, too, was fighting for us; and then, Andrés, we lost man after man, the bravest, the youngest, first: they were murdered, as I may be tonight, killed among the lianas, overtaken in the villages, smothered in small detachments by great forces, until now. And it is for that I have said so much, when it is unnecessary to pronounce a word. What do you think is our present situation? What do you think I left of our splendid effort in the interior? General Agramonte and thirty-five men. That and no more!
“Their condition you may see in me—wasted, hardly stronger than pigeons, and less than half armed. What, do you think, one boy from Pennsylvania is worth to that? Can he live without 82 food more than half the time, without solid land under his feet, without protection against the mosquitoes and heat and tropical rains? And in Havana: but remember your friend, Tirso Labrador! You, Andrés, have no alternative; but your Charles Abbott he would be a danger rather than an assistance.” Charles, with a prodigious effort at a calm self-control, answered him.
“You are very thoughtful, and it is right to be cautious, but what you say is useless. Andrés understands! I’d never be satisfied to be anything except a Cuban patriot. It isn’t necessary for you to understand that in a minute, an evening. I might be no good in Camagüey, but I am not as young as Tirso; I am more bitter and patient. By heaven, I will do something, I will be a part of your bravery! Not only the soldiers in the field, not only Agramonte, but sacrifice—”