We presently passed a lot of officers standing outside a doorway.
'That's the Officers' Club,' Gerald told me, as he took his hat off, and they all clicked their heels and saluted, looking from Gerald to myself with that same puzzled look—they seemed very unfriendly. We waited a minute or two to let a battery of field artillery rumble past—the guns were 'horsed' with mules—turned down another side street, and entered a cool courtyard with more fountains splashing. There were any number of people in it; they nearly all had black and green rosettes with horizontal stripes, and all bowed very cordially to Gerald. He spoke to several, looked as if he had heard bad news, and took us into the back of the Hotel de L'Europe, up some narrow wooden stairs, opened a door on a narrow landing, and there we were in a corner room with a large French window opening on to an iron balcony and overlooking the great square. The cathedral tower, with its arched entrance and broad steps, wasn't fifty yards away.
'You'll get a grand view here—it's cool too—you'd get sunstroke outside—stay where you are—I'll be back presently—I've just had some important news,' Gerald jerked out, and left us to watch the people and the soldiers pouring into the square—'Plaza' every one called it. These soldiers were jolly smart-looking chaps, well dressed and well set up, very different to those we had seen at Los Angelos. They all had the vertical green and yellow stripes in their white helmets, and even we could see that they were pretty rough in dealing with the people. We saw several of the ward-room fellows hunting about for a good place to see the procession, and the two Skippers drove up to the cathedral, in uniform, the soldiers making a way for their carriage, and driving the people back by prodding them in the stomach with the butt-ends of their rifles.
Gerald came in again looking worried.
'Everything all right?' I asked.
He nodded, and sat down in a corner.
'The soldiers don't treat the people very gently,' I said, and he told me that they were all Presidential troops in the city that day, and that there was no love lost between them and the country people, who had poured into the city to pay respect to the President's wife. 'If you look closely, you'll see that a great many of these are wearing the badge of the de Costas—the horizontal green and black stripes.'
'I heard to-day,' he went on, 'that the President's wife, just before she died, made her brother, de Costa, and her husband, José Canilla, shake hands and promise to keep the peace after she was gone.'
'Will they?' Bob asked, with his mouth open.
He only smiled and shrugged his shoulders—quite like a Spaniard. 'They called her La Buena Presidente, and she was a good old lady and kept the peace, but she's kept back progress and reform for years. There's no such thing as freedom in the country. There will soon be a change now.'