From this grim scene Ricardo raised his eyes to the palace, the castellated towers of which, looming through the tufted palms, were reflecting the setting sun. Over the balustrade of one of the upper balconies the limp body of a Sarros sharpshooter, picked off from the street, drooped grotesquely, his arms hanging downward as if in ironical welcome to the son of Ruey the Beloved. The sight induced in Ricardo a sense of profound sadness; his Irish imagination awoke; to him that mute figure seemed to call upon him for pity, for kindness, for forbearance, for understanding and sympathy. Those outflung arms of the martyred peon symbolized to Ricardo Ruey the spirit of liberty, shackled and helpless, calling upon him for deliverance; they brought to his alert mind a clearer realization of the duty that was his than he had ever had before. He had a great task to perform, a task inaugurated by his father, and which Ricardo could not hope to finish in his lifetime. He must solve the agrarian problem; he must develop the rich natural resources of his country; he must provide free, compulsory education and evolve from the ignorance of the peon an intelligence that would built up that which Sobrante, in common with her sister republics, so woefully lacked--the great middle class that stands always as a buffer between the aggression and selfishness of the upper class and the helplessness and childishness of the lower.
Ricardo bowed his head. “Help me, O Lord,” he prayed. “Thou hast give me in Thy wisdom a man's task. Help me that I may not prove unworthy.”
|MOTHER JENKS, grown impatient at the lack of news concerning Webster, left Dolores to her grief in the room across the hall and sought the open air, for of late she had been experiencing with recurring frequency a slight feeling of suffocation. She sat down on the broad granite steps, helped herself to a much-needed “bracer” from her brandy flask and was gazing pensively at the scene around her when Ricardo came up the stairs.
“'Elio!” Mother Jenks saluted him. “W'ere 'ave you been, Mr. Bowers?”
“I have just returned from capturing Sarros, Mrs. Jenks. He is on his way to the arsenal under guard.”
“Gor' strike me pink!” the old lady cried. “'Ave I lived to see this day!” Her face was wreathed in a happy smile. “I wonder 'ow the beggar feels to 'ave the shoe on the other foot, eh--the'eartless'ound! I'm 'opin' this General Ruey will 'ave the blighter shot.”