John Buchan - The Courts of the Morning (John Buchan) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

The club dining-room was full, and when they left it for coffee on the terrace beside the patio they had difficulty in finding chairs. It was apparently the practice to dine elsewhere and come to the club to dance, for a band was pounding out ragtime, and a dozen couples were on the floor.

"The Moplahs," Janet sighed happily.

It was beyond doubt the American party from the yacht, and in that place they were as exotic as a tuberose in a bed of wallflowers. They had conformed to convention in their dress, for the four men wore dinner-jackets, and the four girls bright, short-skirted, silk-taffeta gowns and long pearl necklaces. Among the powdered Olifero ladies and the sallow Olifero cavaliers their fresh skins made a startling contrast, and not less startling were their shrill, toneless voices. They chattered incessantly, crying badinage to each other and to the band, as they danced the half-savage dances with an abandon which now suggested wild children and now the lunatic waltzing of hares in an April moonlight. Janet laughed aloud, the picture was so crazily fantastic. A Spanish girl, in a frock with wide flounces and with blue-black hair dressed high and surmounted by a gold comb, was suddenly cannoned into by a fluffy-headed minx, who apologised in a voice like a vindictive kitten's, and was rewarded by a stony stare. Just so, Janet remembered, she had seen a greyhound repel the impudence of a Skye terrier.

"I don't see my tall girl," she said.

"The fellow with the starched linen knickerbockers isn't here," said Archie. "I didn't see his face, but I think I would know him again. Who are they, Mr Wilbur?"

The American's eyes were hard with disapproval. "I can't tell you their names, but they're off the Corinna. They're in Burton Rawlinson's party. Mr Rawlinson isn't on board himself, and there can't be much of a restraining hand to shepherd the bunch. Some of them have been to my office, and I judge I'm going to hear of trouble with them before they quit these shores. They want this city to stop still and take notice of them."

Archie inquired concerning Mr Rawlinson.

"He's a fine man and a big man, one of the biggest on the Pacific coast. I've nothing against Burton. He's rich, and he's public-spirited, and he's gotten a mighty fine collection of pictures. I can't say I take to his offspring and their friends. There's more dollars than sense in that outfit."

"I like the Moplahs," said Janet. "I want to know them."

Archie, who was a connoisseur of dancing, observed that the men danced better than the women, a thing he had noticed before with Americans. "Did a fellow with starched linen bags ever come to your office?" he asked the Consul. "Slightly built fellow, a little shorter than me?"

Mr Wilbur shook his head. "Maybe, but I don't remember him. All their garments struck me as curious. Heaven knows what's going to become of our youth, Sir Archibald. They've quit behaving like ladies and gentlemen--running wild like bronchos, and their parents can't do the lassooing. They're hard cases at seventeen."

"There's an appalling innocence about them," said Janet and looked up smiling, for two of the dancers had left the floor and were approaching them.

The girl was small, and a little too plump, but very pretty, with a mop of golden curls like a mediæval page's. The young man was thin and beaky, and his longish hair was parted in the middle.

"Say, what about dancing?" he said. "Won't you cut in?" He looked at Janet, while the girl smiled pleasantly on Archie.

"Most awfully sorry," said Archie. "I'd love to, but I've got a game leg."

"Pardon?"

"I mean I'm a bit lame."

Janet rose smiling and took the young man's arm.

"I don't know your name," said Mr Wilbur, who was a stickler for the conventions, "but I reckon you're with the Corinna party. This lady is Lady Roylance."

The youth regarded him solemnly. "You've said it, Grandpa," was his reply. "Come on, lady."

The girl was still partnerless, and Don Alejandro offered himself for the breach. He sprang to his feet and bowed deeply from the waist. "If I may have the honour," he said. Archie and the Consul were left alone to their cigars.

The dancing-place was soon crowded, and Janet and Don Alejandro seemed to have been completely absorbed into the whirl. Glimpses could be caught of Janet's porcelain elegance, and of an unwontedly energetic Don Alejandro in the grip of various corybantic maidens. The two men in the lounge-chairs presently ceased to be spectators and fell into talk.

Mr Wilbur, as if the absence of his colleague had unsealed his tongue, expanded and became almost confidential. He asked Archie for his impressions of Olifa, and when he was told "tidy and contented and opulent," nodded an acquiescent head.

"You're about right, sir. That's Olifa first and last--the Olifa of to-day. Better policed than New York, and just about as clean as Philadelphia. Manicured, you might say. But it wasn't always like that. When I first came here Olifa was the ordinary South American republic, always on the edge of bankruptcy and revolution, and this city had one of the worst names on the coast. The waterfront was a perfect rat-hole for every criminal in the Pacific--every brand of roughneck and dope-smuggler and crook--dagos with knives and niggers with razors and the scum of the U-nited States with guns. To-day you could take your wife along it in perfect safety any hour of the night. The Treasury was empty, for politics were simply who could get their hands first and deepest into it. There was bad trouble up-country, and there was always a war going on in the mountains, which the little under-fed and never-paid soldiers couldn't win. Now we've got a big balance in the budget and the peace of God over the land. It's a kind of miracle. It's almost against nature, Sir Archibald."

"Why, it's principally the Gran Seco," he continued, in response to Archie's request for an explanation. "That, as you know, is the richest copper proposition on the globe, and the Government has a big share in it. There's money to burn for everybody nowadays. But there's more than money. Olifa's gotten a first-class brain to help her along."

"The President?"

Wilbur laughed.

"The Excelentisimo is a worthy gentleman, and he has gotten some respectable folks to help him, but it isn't the President of this republic that has made the desert blossom like the rose. There's a bigger brain behind him."

"You mean the Gran Seco fellow--what's his name?"

"I mean Mr Castor. At least I reckon it must be Mr Castor, for there isn't anybody else. You see, I can size up the members of the Government, because I know them, so it must be the man I don't know."

"I see. Well, it's clear that I must get alongside of this Castor if I'm to learn much about Olifa. What's the best way to work it?"

"Through the President, I reckon. I'd like to help you, but I haven't much of a pull in Olifa just at the moment. You see, the U-nited States is going through one of its periodical fits of unpopularity. Olifa has waxed fat, like the man in the Bible, and she's kicking, and when a South American nation kicks it's generally against the U-nited States. Don Alejandro will fix an interview with the President for you, and he'll arrange your trip to the Gran Seco. He's a good little man, though he don't like my country."

Thereafter Mr Wilbur discoursed of his nation--its strength and its weakness, its active intelligence, imperfect manners, and great heart. He was a critic, but he was also an enthusiast. To this man, grown old in foreign lands in his country's service, America was still the America of his youth. Her recent developments he knew only from the newspapers, and he loyally strove to reconcile them with his old ideal. America only needed to be understood to be loved, but it was hard to get her true worth across the footlights. "You English," he said, "have got a neat, hard-shell national character, with a high gloss on it. Foreigners may not like it, but they can't mistake it. It hits them in the eye every time. But we're young and growing and have a lot of loose edges, and it's mighty hard to make people understand that often when we talk foolishness we mean wisdom, and that when we act high and mighty and rile our neighbours it's because we're that busy trying to get a deal through we haven't time to think of susceptibilities. You've got to forget our untidy fringes."