SHOWING HOW BRAZIL CHOSE HER PRESIDENT
Two thousand five hundred years ago the prophet Jeremiah expressed
incredulity as to the power of an Ethiopian to change his skin or a
leopard his spots. The march of the centuries has fully justified the
seer's historic doubt, so it makes but slight demand on the critical
faculties to assume that two years' residence in Europe had not cooled
the hot southern blood flowing in Carmela's veins.
She had hated Iris before she set eyes on her; she hated her now that she
had seen her rare beauty; she gloated on the suffering inflicted by the
presence of the faded old man who claimed her as his bride. Though it
was of the utmost importance that she should hasten to her father, she
returned to Las Flores in her rival's company, their arms linked in
seeming friendship, and the Brazilian girl's ears alert to treasure every
word that told of Bulmer's wooing.
Therein she greatly miscalculated the true gentility of one whom his
cronies described as "a rough diamond." Bulmer realized that Iris was
overwrought. Vague but sensational items in newspapers had prepared him
in some measure for the story of her wanderings since last they met in
quiet, old-fashioned Bootle. He felt that she was altered, that their
ways in life had deviated with a sharpness that was not to be brought
back into parallel grooves simply because he had traveled many thousands
of miles to find her.
So Dickey contented himself by listening to Coke's Homeric account of the
_Andromeda's_ wrecking, and if he interposed an occasional question, and
thus drew the girl's sweet voice into the talk, it was invariably germane
to the strange history of the ship and her human freight.
Coke's narrative was picturesque and lurid. At times, he called himself
to order; at times, both Iris and Carmela affected not to have heard him.
But Carmela's interest never flagged. Nor did Bulmer's. As the yarn
progressed--for Watts and Schmidt and Norrie had joined them, and the
whole party was seated in an inner room where an impromptu meal was
provided--both the woman of Brazil and the man of Lancashire seized on
the same unspoken _motif_. Every incident centered in the striking
personality of Philip Hozier. From the instant the second shell struck
the winch, and laid him apparently dead on the forecastle, to the very
hour of this coming together at Las Flores, Hozier held the stage. It
was he who took Iris on his shoulders and brought her to safety through
the spume of the wrathful sea, he who carried her to the hut, he who
crossed Fernando Noronha alone to protect her.
Coke was impartial. He would have minimized his own singular bravery in
running up the ship's signals had not Iris given him a breathing-space
while she enthralled the others with her description. Otherwise, Coke
skipped no line of his epic.
"You'll rec'lect," he wheezed, in a voice that rasped like a file,
"you'll rec'lect, Mr. Verity, as I said to you that Hozier was good
enough to take charge of the bridge of a battleship. By--well, any 'ow,
if I'd said the Channel Fleet I shouldn't 'ave bin talkin' through me
'at. Look at 'im now. 'E's the on'y reel live man Dom Wot's-'is-name
'as got. Sink me! if it wasn't for the folks at 'ome, an' the fac' that
the _Andromeeda's_ skipper ought to keep clear of politics in this
crimson country, I'd 'ave a cut in at the game meself."
It might be hoped that Carmela's mood would soften when she discovered
her rival's hapless love, but that would be expecting something which her
bursting southern heart could not give. A volcano pours forth lava, not
water. It scorches, not heals. Iris, willing or not, had sapped her
Salvador's allegiance. Carmela wanted to see those curved lips writhing
in pain, those brown eyes dimmed, that smooth brow wrung with the grief
that knows no remedy.
A fierce joy leaped up in her when Verity spoke of an early departure.
"You see, Iris," he explained, "these Brazilian bucks may be months in
settlin' their differences. Dickey an' me, 'elped a lot by our Consul,
squeezed a pass out of the President--beg pardon, miss, but 'e is
President, in Pernambuco, at all events," he said in an apologetic
"aside" to Carmela--"an' the sooner we make tracks for ole England the
better it'll be for all of us. Wot do you say to an early start
to-morrow? We'd be off to-night, on'y I'm feared my rheumaticky bones
wouldn't stand the racket."
The color ebbed from Iris's face, but she said at once:
"I shall be ready, uncle dear. I promised Dom Corria to look after the
hospital appliances that are so much needed by the poor soldiers, but the
Senhora De Sylva will attend to that much more effectually than I."
"Good! Then that's settled."
David pursed out his thick lips with a sigh of relief. Though he had
watched the spoken record of the _Andromeda_ and her company for craftier
hints than was suspected by his fellow travelers, he was not deaf to
Coke's appreciation of Hozier. The silence of his niece on that same
topic was alarming, but the position could not be so bad if she was
willing to leave for the coast without seeing him again. No secret was
made of Philip's errand into the interior. The homeward-bound cavalcade
would be at Pesqueira ere he returned to the _finca_.
Carmela, of course, did not believe in a woman's complacency in such a
vital matter. She was ever prepared to spring, to strike, to wrench
their plans to suit her own ends; but, contrive as she might, she could
not succeed in leaving Iris alone with Bulmer. Full of device, she was
foiled at each turn. The day wore, the sun went down, the starlit sky
made beautiful a parched earth, but never a word in privacy did Iris
exchange with her husband-to-be. Carmela's malice was not hidden from
her, but she despised it. There was some ease for her tortured brain in
defeating it. If the Senhora De Sylva had only understood how thoroughly
the Englishwoman loathed her petty jealousy, it was possible that the few
remaining hours of their enforced intimacy might have been rendered less
irksome.
But, by this time, fate had gathered the slackened strings of their
destinies. Thenceforth they became her puppets. Permitted for a little
while to play the tragi-comedy of life according to their own
inclinations, now the stern edict had gone forth that they were to act
their allotted parts in one of those fascinating if blood-stained dramas
that the history of nations so often puts on the stage. The future is
the most cunning of playwrights. No man may tell what the next scene
shall be. And no man, nor any woman, could guess the mad revel of hate
and war that would rage that night around the placid homestead of Las
Flores.
Behind the veranda was a huge ballroom, converted, by the exigencies of
the campaign, into a dining hall for the many inmates of the _finca_.
The Brazilian ladies, the sailors, some sick or wounded officers who were
not confined to bed, even the household servants, took their meals there
in common. Supper was served soon after nine o'clock. When cigars and
cigarettes were lighted, and the company broke up into laughing,
gossiping, noisy groups, the place looked more like a popular Continental
cafe than a room in a private mansion.
Though De Sylva, General Russo, San Benavides, and some score of members
of the President's staff who usually dined at the _finca_, were now
absent, there was no lack of lively chatter. A very Babel of tongues
mixed in amity. The prevalent note was one of cheery animation. Carmela
exerted herself to win popularity, and a President's daughter need not
put forth very strenuous efforts in that direction to be acclaimed by
most.
Iris was listening, with real interest, to Verity's description of the
finding of Macfarlane in the _Andromeda's_ boat by a Cardiff-bound
collier three days after he had drifted away from Fernando Noronha.
"The yarn kem to us through the Consul at Pernambuco," he said.
"Evidently, from wot you tell me, it's all right. Poor ole Mac 'ad a bad
time afore 'e was picked up, but 'e was alive, an' I'm jolly glad of it,
for 'e'll be a first-rate witness w'en this business comes up in court."
"Wot court?" demanded Coke sharply.
"The court that settles our claim, of course," retorted Verity, with a
quick ferret look at his fellow-conspirator.
"There'll be no claim. The President means to stump up in style. You
take my tip, an' shut up about courts," said Coke.
"It'll cost Brazil a tidy penny," remarked Bulmer thoughtfully. "Nobody
would ever imagine wot bags of gold an' parcels of di'monds sailors an'
firemen carry around in their kit-bags till a ship is lost an' a
Gover'ment 'as to pay."
Watts deemed this an exquisite joke. He laughed loudly.
"That reminds me," he cried. "W'en the _Gem of the Sea_ turned turtle on
the James an' Mary----"
A _criado_, a nondescript man-servant attached to the household, stooped
over Iris and whispered something. She gathered that she was wanted in
the _patèo_, or court-yard, which, owing to the construction of the
house, stood on one side instead of in front, where the lawn usurped its
usual position.
"Who is it?" she asked.
The voice sank even lower.
"Colonel San Benavides, Senhora."
She had gathered sufficient of Brazilian ways to understand that the man
had been bribed to convey this request to her without attracting
attention.
"Tell him to wait," she said, hoping to gain a moment wherein to decide
how best to act.
"It is urgent, Senhora--_ao mesmo tempo_, the colonel said."
"Go! That is my answer."
The man's unwillingness to obey showed how imperative were his
instructions. She rose, and the _criado_ hurried out, satisfied that she
would follow. But Iris had no wish to meet San Benavides. If she were
seen with him in the dark _patèo_ at this late hour, fuel would be added
to the fire of Carmela's foolish spite. She was aware of Carmela's
covert glance watching her from the other end of the long room. What was
to be done? Why not send Carmela in her stead? They were almost of the
same height, and dressed somewhat alike in flowered muslin. It would be
an amusing mistake, though annoying, perhaps, to San Benavides; at any
rate, Carmela would not object, and Iris was fully resolved not to keep
the tryst in person.
She walked straight to her enemy.
"Colonel San Benavides awaits you in the _patèo_," she said in English.
"Awaits _me_!"
There was no mistaking the gleam in those jet-black eyes. The smoldering
fire flamed into furnace heat at the implied indignity of such a mandate
being delivered by Iris.
"I suppose so," said Iris carelessly. "A servant brought the message.
He came to me in the first instance, but I am just going to my room to
pack my few belongings. We leave here at daybreak, you know."
Carmela tried to smile.
"I shall be sorry to lose you," she said, "though I admit it will be
pleasant to occupy my own room again."
Then Iris was genuinely distressed.
"I had not the least notion----" she began, but Carmela nodded and made
off, saying as she went:
"What matter--for one night?"
So, at last, she would learn the truth. Salvador was out there, alone.
She would soon judge him. If he were innocent, she would know. If he
had merely been made the sport of a designing woman, she was ready to
forgive. In a more amiable mood than she had displayed at any moment
since her arrival at Las FIores, Carmela hastened along a dark corridor,
crossed a bare hall, passed through a porch, and searched the shadows of
the patèo for the form of her one-time lover.
A voice whispered, in French:
"Come quickly, Senhora, I pray you!"
It startled her to find San Benavides talking French, until it occurred
to her that Iris and he must converse in that language or hardly at all.
The thought was disquieting. The volcano stirred again.
"Senhora, je vous prie!" again pleaded the man, who was on horseback
under the trees.
She did not hesitate, but ran to him. Without a word of explanation, he
bent sideways, caught her in his arms, drew her up until she was seated
on the holsters strapped to a gaucho saddle, and wheeled his horse into a
gallop. Filled with a grim determination, she uttered no protest. Not a
syllable crossed her lips lest he should strive to amend his woeful
blunder. She noticed that they were not going toward the camp, but
circling round the enclosed land in the direction of the hills. Though
the night was dark, the stars gave light enough for the horse to move
freely. Carmela's head was bent. A gauze-like mantilla covered her
black hair, and, strange though it may seem, one woman's small waist and
slim figure can be amazingly like the same physical attributes in another
woman.
But San Benavides wondered why the cold Ingleza had surrendered so
silently. He expected at least a scream, a struggle, an impassioned
demand to be released. He was prepared for anything save a dumb
acceptance of this extraordinary raid.
So he began to explain.
"One word, Senhora!" he muttered. "You must think me mad. I am not.
All is lost! Our army is defeated! In an hour Las Flores will be in
flames!"
The girl quivered in his arms. A moaning cry came from her.
"It is true, I swear it!" he vowed. "I mean you no ill. I fought till
the end, and my good horse alone carried me in advance of the routed
troops. Dom Corria may reach the _finca_ alive, but, even so, he and the
rest will be killed. I refused to escape without you. Believe me or
not, you are dearer than life itself. In the confusion we two may not be
missed. Trust yourself wholly to me, I beseech you!"
He spoke jerkily, in the labored phrase of a man who has to pick and
choose the readiest words in an unfamiliar language.
Carmela, with a sudden movement, raised her face to his, and threw aside
her veil.
"Salvador!" she said.
His eyes glared into hers. His frenzied clutch at the reins pulled the
horse on to its haunches.
"My God! . . . Carmela!" he almost shrieked.
"Yes. So you are running away, Salvador--running away with the English
miss--deserting my father in the hour of his need! But she will die with
the others, you say. Well, then--join her!"
During that quick twist on the horse's withers, she had plucked a
revolver from a holster. She meant to shatter that false face of his
utterly, to blast him as with lightning . . . but the lock snapped
harmlessly, for San Benavides had, indeed, borne himself gallantly in the
fray. He struck at her now in a whirl of fury. She winced, but with
catamount activity drew back her arm and hit him on the temple with the
heavy weapon. He collapsed limply, reeled from off the saddle, and they
fell together. The frightened horse, finding himself at liberty,
galloped to the camp, where already there was an unusual commotion.
Carmela flung herself on the man's body. She was capable of extremes
either of grief or passion.
"Salvador, my love! my love!" she screamed. "What have I done? Speak to
me, Salvador! It is I, Carmela! Oh, Mary Mother, come to my aid! I
have killed him, killed my Salvador!"
He looked very white and peaceful as he lay there in the gloom. She
could not see whether his lips moved. She was too distraught to note if
his heart was beating. It seemed incredible that she, a weak woman,
should have crushed the life out of that lithe and active frame with one
blow. Then a dark stain appeared on the white skin. Her hands, her
lips, were covered with blood. She tasted it. The whole earth reeked of
it. It scorched her as with vitriol. She rose and ran blindly. The
darkness appalled her. No matter now what fate befell, she must have
light, the sound of human voices. . . . And she sobbed piteously as she
ran:
"Salvador! Oh, God in heaven, my Salvador!"
It is not the crime, but the conscience, that scourges erring humanity.
Carmela needed some such flogging. It was just as well that her fright
at the horrible touch of blood was not balanced by the saner knowledge
that a ruptured vein was nature's own remedy for a man jarred into
insensibility. Long before Carmela reached the _finca_, San Benavides
stirred, groaned, squirmed convulsively, and raised himself on hands and
knees. He turned, and sat down, feeling his head.
"The spit-fire!" he muttered. "The she-devil! And that other! Would
that I could wring _her_ neck!"
A sputtering of rifles crackled in the valley. There was a blurred
clamor of voices. He looked at the sky, at the black summits of the
hills. He stood up, and his inseparable sword clanked on the stony
ground.
"Ah, well," he growled, "I have done with women. They have had the best
of my life. What is left I give to Brazil."
So he, too, made for Las Flores, but slowly, for he was quite exhausted,
and his limbs were stiff with the rigors of a wild day in the saddle.
Carmela went back to a household that paid scant heed to her screaming.
Dom Corria was there, bare-headed, his gorgeous uniform sword-slashed and
blood-bespattered. General Russo, too, was beating his capacious chest
and shouting:
"God's bones, let us make a fight of it!"
A sprinkling of soldiers, all dismounted cavalry or gunners, a few
disheveled officers, had accompanied De Sylva in his flight. With
reckless bravery, he and Russo had tried to rally the troops camped at
headquarters. It was a hopeless effort. Half-breeds can never produce a
military caste. They may fight valiantly in the line of battle--they
will not face the unknown, the terrible, the harpies that come at night,
borne on the hurricane wings of panic. Unhappily, De Sylva and his
bodyguard were the messengers of their own disaster. The cowardly genius
at Pesqueira had planned a surprise. He would not lead it, of course,
but in Dom Miguel Barraca he found an eager substitute. It was a coup of
the Napoleonic order; an infantry attack along the entire front of the
Liberationist position cloaked the launching against the center of a
formidable body of cavalry. The project was to thrust this lance into
the rebel position, probe it thoroughly, as a surgeon explores a gunshot
wound, and extract the offender in the guise of Dom Corria.
The scheme had proved eminently successful. The Liberationists were
crumpled up, and here was Dom Corria making his last stand.
He deserved better luck, for he was magnificent in failure. Calm as
ever, he tried to be shot or captured when the reserves in camp failed
him. Russo and the rest dragged him onward by main force.
"They want me only," he urged. "My death will end a useless struggle. I
shall die a little later, when many more of my friends are killed. Why
not die now?"
They would not listen.
"It is night!" they cried. "The enemy's horses are spent. A determined
stand may give us another chance."
But it was a forlorn hope. As San Benavides lurched into the _patèo_,
the horses of the first pursuing detachment strained up the slope between
house and encampment.
Carmela, all her fire gone, the pallid ghost of the vengeful woman who
would have shattered her lover's skull were the revolver loaded, was the
first to see him. She actually crouched in terror. Her tongue was
parched. If she uttered some low cry, none heard her.
Dom Corria, striving to dispose his meager garrison as best he could, met
his trusted lieutenant. His face lit with joy.
"Ah, my poor Salvador!" he cried. "I thought we had lost you at the
ford!"
"No," said San Benavides. "I ran away!"
Even in his dire extremity, De Sylva smiled.
"Would that others had run like you, my Salvador!" he said. "Then we
should have been in Pernambuco to-morrow."
The Brazilian looked around. His eye dwelt heedlessly on the cowering
Carmela. He was searching for Iris, who had been compelled by Coke and
Bulmer and her uncle to take shelter behind the score of sailors who
still remained at Las Flores.
"It is true, nevertheless," he said laconically. "I knew the game was
lost, so I came here to try and save a lady."
"Ah--our Carmela? You thought of her?"
"No!"
Then the spell passed from Carmela. She literally threw herself on her
lover.
"Yes, it is true!" she shrieked. "He came to save me, but I preferred to
die here--with you, father--and with him."
Dom Corria did not understand these fire-works, but he had no time for
thought. Bullets were crashing through the closed Venetians. Light they
must have, or the defense would become an orgy of self-destruction, yet
light was their most dangerous foe when men were shooting from the somber
depths of the trees.
The assailants were steadily closing around the house. Their rifles
covered every door and window. Each minute brought up fresh bands in
tens and twenties. At last, Barraca himself arrived. Some members of
his staff made a hasty survey of the situation. There were some three
hundred men available, and, in all probability, Dom Corria could not
muster one-sixth of that number. It was a crisis that called for vigor.
The cavalry lance was twenty miles from its base, and there was no
knowing what accident might reunite the scattered Liberationists. One
column, at least, of the Nationalists had failed to keep its rendezvous,
or this last desperate stand at Las Flores would have proved a sheer
impossibility.
So the house must be rushed, no matter what the cost. This was a war of
leaders. Let Dom Corria fall, and his most enthusiastic supporters would
pay Dom Miguel's taxes without further parley. A scheme of concerted
action was hastily arranged. Simultaneously, five detachments swarmed
against the chosen points of assault. One crossed the _patèo_ to the
porch, another made for the stable entrance, a third attacked the garden
door, a fourth assailed the servants' quarters, and the fifth, strongest
of all, and inspired by Dom Miguel's presence, battered in the shutters
and tore away the piled up furniture of the ballroom.
The Nationalist leader's final order was terse.
"Spare the women; shoot every rebel; do not touch the foreigners unless
they resist!"
With yells of "Abajo De Sylva!" "Morto por revoltados!" the assailants
closed in. Neither side owned magazine rifles, so the fight was with
machetes, swords, and bayonets when the first furious hail of lead had
spent itself. No man thought of quarter, nor ceased to stab and thrust
until he fell. Not even then did some of the half-savage combatants
desist, and a many a thigh was gashed and boot-protected leg cut to the
bone by those murderous hatchet knives wielded by hands which would soon
stiffen in death.
When three hundred desperadoes meet fifty of like caliber in a
hand-to-hand conflict--when the three hundred mean to end the business,
and the fifty know that they must die--fighting for choice, but die in
any event--the resultant encounter will surely be both fierce and brief.
And never was fratricidal strife more sanguinary than during the earliest
onset within the walls. Each inch of corridor, each plank of the
ballroom floor, was contested with insane ferocity. This was not
warfare. It savored of the carnage of the jungle. Its sounds were those
of wild beasts. It smelled of the shambles.
By one of those queer chances which sometimes decide the hazard between
life and death, the window nearest that end of the room where the sailors
strove to protect a few shrieking women had not been broken in. Here,
then, was a tiny bay of refuge; from it the men of the _Andromeda_ and
the _Unser Fritz_, Bulmer, Verity, Iris, and such of the Brazilian ladies
as had not fled to the upper rooms at the initial volley, looked out on
an amazing butchery. De Sylva, no longer young, and never a robust man,
had been dragged from mortal peril many times by his devoted adherents.
Carmela had snatched a machete from the fingers of a dying soldier, and
was fighting like one possessed of a fiend.
Once, when a combined rush drove the defenders nearly on top of the
non-combatants, Iris would have striven to draw the half-demented girl
into the little haven with the other women.
But Coke thrust her back, shouting:
"Leave 'er alone. She'll set about you if you touch her!"
Dickey Bulmer, too, who was displaying a fortitude hardly to be expected
in a man of his years and habits, thought that interference was useless.
"Let 'er do what she can," he said. "She doesn't know wot is 'appenin'
now. If she was on'y watchin' she'd be a ravin' lunatic. God 'elp us
all, we've got ourselves into a nice mess!"
Somehow, the old man's Lancashire drawl, with its broad vowels and
misplaced aspirates, exercised a singularly soothing effect on Iris's
tensely-strung nerves. It seemed to remove her from that murder-filled
arena. It was redolent of home, of quiet streets, of orderly crowds
thronging to the New Brighton sands, of the sober, industrious,
God-fearing folk who filled the churches and chapels at each service on a
Sunday. These men and women of Brazil were her brothers and sisters in
the great comity of nations, yet Heaven knows they did not figure in such
guise during that hour of intense emotions.
But if Dickey Bulmer's simple words exalted him into the kingdom of the
heroic, David Verity occupied a lower plane. Prayers and curses
alternated on his lips. He was stupefied with fear. He had never seen
the lust of slaying in men's eyes, and it mesmerized him. Many of the
sailors wanted to join in on behalf of their friends. It needed all
Coke's vehemence to restrain them. "Keep out of it, you swabs," he would
growl. "It's your on'y chanst. This isn't our shindy. Let 'em rip an'
be hanged to 'em!" Yet he was manifestly uneasy, and he kept a wary eye
on De Sylva, whom he appraised at a personal value of five thousand
pounds "an pickin's."
A tall, distinguished-looking man, wearing a brilliant uniform, his
breast decorated with many orders, now appeared on the scene. He shouted
something, and the attacking force redoubled their efforts. He raised a
revolver, and took deliberate aim at Dom Corria. Coke saw him, and his
bulldog pluck combined with avarice to overcome his common sense.
Without thought of the consequences, he sprang into the swaying mob and
pulled De Sylva aside. A bullet smashed into the wall behind them.
"Look out, mister!" he bellowed. "'Ere's a blighter 'oo wants to finish
you quick!"
De Sylva's glance sought his adversary. He produced a revolver which
hitherto had remained hidden in a pocket. Perhaps its bullets were not
meant for an enemy. He fired at the tall man. A violent swerve of the
two irregular ranks of soldiers screened each from the other. An opening
offered, and the man who had singled out Dom Corria for his special
vengeance fired again. The bullet struck Coke in the breast. The
valiant little skipper staggered, and sank to the floor. His fiery eyes
gazed up into Verity's.
"Damme if I ain't hulled!" he roared, his voice loud and harsh as if he
were giving some command from the bridge in a gale of wind.
David dropped to his knees.
"For Gawd's sake, Jimmie!" he moaned.
"Yes, I've got it. Sarve me dam well right, too! No business to go
ag'in me own pore old ship. Look 'ere, Verity, I'm done for! If you get
away from this rotten muss, see to my missus an' the girls. If you
don't--d--n you----"
"Fire!" shouted a strong English voice from without. A withering volley
crashed through the open windows. Full twenty of the assailants fell,
Dom Miguel de Barraca among them. There was an instant of terrible
silence, as between the shocks of an earthquake.
[Illustration: A withering volley crashed through the window]
"Now, come on!" shouted the same voice, and Philip Hozier rushed into the
ballroom, followed by his scouts and a horde of Brazilian regulars. No
one not actually an eye-witness of that thrilling spectacle would believe
that a fight waged with such determined malevolence could stop so
suddenly as did that fray in Las Flores. It was true, now as ever, that
men of a mixed race cannot withstand the unforeseen. Dom Miguel fallen,
and his cohort decimated by the leaden storm that tore in at them from an
unexpected quarter, the rest fled without another blow. They raced madly
for their horses, to find that every tethered group was in the hands of
this new contingent. Then the darkness swallowed them. Dom Miguel's
cavalry was disbanded.
At once the medley within died down. Men had no words as yet to meet
this astounding development. Dom Corria went to where his rival lay.
Dom Miguel was dying. His eyes met De Sylva's in a strange look of
recognition. He tried to speak, but choked and died.
Then the living President stooped over the dead one. He murmured
something. Those near thought afterward that he said:
"Is it worth it? Who knows!"
But he was surely President now; seldom have power and place been more
hardly won.
His quiet glance sought Philip.
"Thank you, Mr. Hozier," he said. "All Brazil is your debtor. As for
me, I can never repay you. I owe you my life, the lives of my daughter
and of many of my friends, and the success of my cause."
Philip heard him as in a dream. He was looking at Iris. Her eyes were
shining, her lips parted, yet she did not come to him. By her side was
standing a white-haired old man, an Englishman, a stranger. Bending over
Coke, and wringing his hands in incoherent sorrow, was another elderly
Briton. A fear that Philip had never before known gripped his
heartstrings now. He was pale and stern, and his forehead was seamed
with foreboding.
"Who is that with Miss Yorke?" he said to Dom Corria.
The President had a rare knack of answering a straight question in a
straight way.
"A Mr. Bulmer, I am told," he said.
There was a pause. General Russo, carved from head to foot, but so stout
withal that his enemies' weapons had reached no vital part, approached.
He thumped his huge stomach.
"We must rally our men," he said. "If we collect even five thousand
to-night----"
"Yes," said De Sylva, "I will come. Before I go, Mr. Hozier, let me
repeat that I and Brazil are grateful."
"May the devil take both you and Brazil!" was Philip's most ungracious
reply, and he turned and strode out into the night.