The White Mice

by Richard Harding Davis

Of the two sisters, Lolita, the elder, was like her father—grave, gracious, speaking but seldom and, in spite of the years spent in foreign capitals, still a Spanish-American. Her interests were in her church, her music and the duties of the household.

Of all the names given at her christening to the younger sister, the one that survived was Inez. Inez was a cosmopolitan. She had been permitted to see too much of the world to make it possible for her ever again to sit down tamely behind the iron bars of the Porto Cabello drawing-room. She was too much like her American mother; not as her mother was now, after thirty years in a Venezuelan’s household, but as her mother had been when she left the New England college town. Unlike her sister, she could not be satisfied with the cloister-like life of the young girls of Spanish-America. During the time her father had served as minister to Paris she had been at school in the convent at Neuilly, but at the time he was transferred to London she was of an age to make her bow at court, and old enough to move about with a freedom which, had it been permitted her at home, would have created public scandal. She had been free to ride in the Row, to play tennis, to walk abroad, even through public streets and parks, even when it rained, even unattended. She had met men, not always as prospective suitors, but as friends and companions.

And there had been a wonderful visit to her mother’s country and her mother’s people, when for a summer she had rejoiced in the friendly, inconsequent, out-of-door life of a Massachusetts’ seaside colony. Once on the North Shore, and later on Cape Cod, she had learned to swim, to steer a knockabout, to dance the “Boston,” even in rubber-soled shoes, to “sit out” on the Casino balcony and hear young men, with desperate anxiety, ask if there were any more in South America like her. To this question she always replied that there were not; and that, in consequence, if the young man had any thoughts on the subject, she was the person to whom they should be addressed.

Then, following the calm, uneventful life of the convent, of London and its gayeties, of the Massachusetts coast with its gray fogs and open, drift-wood fires, came the return to her own country. There, with her father, she rode over his plantations among the wild cattle, or with her mother and sister sat in the patio and read novels in three languages, or sleepily watched the shadow of the tropical sun creep across the yellow wall.

And then, suddenly, all of these different, happy lives were turned into memories, shadows, happenings of a previous and unreal existence. There came a night, which for months later in terrified dreams returned to haunt her, a night when she woke to find her bed surrounded by soldiers, to hear in the court-yard the sobs of her mother and the shrieks of the serving-women, to see her father—concerned only for his wife and daughters—in a circle of the secret police, to see him, before she could speak with him, hurried to a closed carriage and driven away.

Then had begun the two years of exile in Willemstad, the two years of mourning, not of quiet grief for one at rest, but anxious, unending distress for one alive, one dearly loved, one tortured in mind, enduring petty indignities, bodily torments, degradations that killed the soul and broke the brave spirit.

To the three women Rojas had been more than husband or father. He had been their knight, their idol, their reason for happiness. They alone knew how brave he was, how patient, how, beyond imagination, considerate. That they should be free to eat and sleep, to work and play, while he was punished like a felon, buried alive, unable to carry on the work in the world God had given him to do, caused them intolerable misery. While he suffered there was no taste in life, and the three shut themselves from the world. They admitted only the Consul, who had been his friend, and those who, like themselves, were exiles, and in whose hatred of Alvarez lay their only hope of again seeing the one they loved. Time after time a plan of rescue had failed. A plot that promised release had been disclosed and the conspirators punished. Hope had left them, and, on the part of their friends, had been followed by lethargy.

But within the last three months a new hope had arisen, and with it, for the younger daughter, a new distress.

It was whispered that a revolution, backed by great wealth and sanctified by the prayers of the people, was to be started near Valencia. Its leader in the field was to be young Pino Vega, in several campaigns the personal aide-de-camp of General Rojas, a young man indebted to his chief for many favors, devoted to him by reason of mutual confidence and esteem. If successful, this revolt against Alvarez was to put Vega in command of the army, to free Rojas and to place him as president at Miraflores. To the women the thought that Rojas might become president was intolerable. It was because he had consented to be president that he had suffered. The mere thought of the office, and of the cruelties that had been practised by the man who held it, made it, to the women, terrifying.

For Rojas they wanted neither position nor power. They wanted Rojas free. They wanted to hold him close, to touch him, to look into his eyes, to see the gentle, understanding smile.