Indoors or out I generally had Dolores for a companion, and I could certainly not have had a more charming one. The civil war—though the little splutter on the Yí scarcely deserved that name yet—was her unfailing theme. She was never weary of singing her hero Santa Coloma’s praises—his dauntless courage and patience in defeat; his strange romantic adventures; the innumerable disguises and stratagems he had resorted to when going about in his own country, where a price was set on his head; ever labouring to infuse fresh valour into his beaten, disheartened followers. That the governing party had any right to be in power, or possessed any virtue of any kind, or were, in fact, anything but an incubus and a curse to the Banda Orientál, she would not for one moment admit. To her mind her country always appeared like Andromeda bound on her rock and left weeping and desolate to be a prey to the abhorred Colorado monster; while ever to the deliverance of this lovely being came her glorious Perseus, swift as the winds of heaven, the lightnings of terrible vengeance flashing from his eyes, the might of the immortals in his strong right arm. Often she tried to persuade me to join this romantic adventurer, and it was hard, very hard, to resist her eloquent appeals, and perhaps it grew harder every day as the influence of her passionate beauty strengthened itself upon my heart. Invariably I took refuge in the argument that I was a foreigner, that I loved my country with an ardour equal to hers, and that by taking arms in the Banda Orientál I should at once divest myself of all an Englishman’s rights and privileges. She scarcely had patience to listen to this argument, it seemed so trivial to her, and when she demanded other better reasons I had none to offer. I dare not quote to her the words of sulky Achilles:
The distant Trojans never injured me, for that argument would have sounded even weaker to her than the former one. She had never read Homer in any language, of course, but she would have quickly made me tell her about Achilles, and when the end came, with miserable Hector dragged thrice round the walls of besieged Troy—Montevideo was called Modern Troy, she knew—then she would have turned my argument against me and bidden me go and serve the Uruguayan President as Achilles served Hector. Seeing me silent, she would turn indignantly away only for a moment, however; the bright smile would quickly return, and she would exclaim, “No, no, Richard, I shall not forget my promise, though I sometimes think you try to make me do so.”
It was noon: the house was quiet, for Doña Mercedes had retired after breakfast to take her unfailing siesta, leaving us to our conversation. In that spacious, cool room where I had first reposed in the house, I was lying on the sofa smoking a cigarette. Dolores, seating herself near me with her guitar, said, “Now let me play and sing you to sleep with something very soft.” But the more she played and sang the further was I from unneeded slumber.
“What, not sleeping yet, Richard!” she would say, with a little laugh after each song.
“Not yet, Dolores,” I would reply, pretending to get drowsy. “But my eyes are getting heavy now. One more song will send me to the region of dreams. Sing me that sweet favourite—
Desde aquel doloroso momento.”
At length, finding that my sleepiness was all pretence, she refused to sing any more, and presently we drifted once more into the old subject.
“Ah, yes,” she replied to that argument about my nationality, which was my only shield, “I have always been taught to believe foreigners a cold, practical, calculating kind of people—so different from us. You never seemed to me like a foreigner; ah, Richard, why will you make me remember that you are not one of us! Tell me, dear friend, if a beautiful woman cried out to you to deliver her from some great misfortune or danger, would you stop to ask her nationality before going to her rescue?”
“No, Dolores; you know that if you, for instance, were in distress or danger I would fly to your side and risk my life to save you.”
“I believe you, Richard. But tell me, is it less noble to help a suffering people cruelly oppressed by wicked men who have succeeded by crimes and treachery and foreign aid in climbing into power? Will you tell me that no Englishman has drawn a sword in a cause like that? Oh, friend, is not my mother-country more beautiful and worthy to be helped than any woman? Has not God given her spiritual eyes that shed tears and
