THE POST OF HONOUR.--THE SECRETARY'S AFFAIR
Hemming awoke with a clear head, despite the President's whiskey, and
remembered, with satisfaction, the extra ten pounds. His windows
were wide open, and a cool dawn wind came in across the gardens. He
threw aside the sheet and went over to the middle window, and,
finding that the ledge extended to form a narrow balcony, stepped
outside. Away to the right, he could mark a bend of the river by the
low-lying mist. He sniffed the air. "There is fever in it," he
said, and wondered how many kinds of a fool Mr. Tetson was. He was
sorry for the ladies. They did not look like the kind of people to
enjoy being shut away from the world in such a God-forsaken hole as
this. Why didn't the old ass start a town on the coast? he asked
himself. While engaged in these puzzling reflections, Smith rapped
at the door, and entered. He carried coffee, a few slices of dry
toast, and a jug of shaving-water.
"Will you ride this morning, sir?" he asked.
"Why, yes," replied Hemming, and said he would be shaved before
drinking his coffee. As the valet lathered his chin, he asked if the
President rode every morning.
"Not 'e, sir," replied the man, "but Miss Tetson does, and Mr. 'Icks."
Hemming found his well-worn riding-breeches brushed and folded, his
boots and spurs shining like the sun, and a new cotton tunic ready
for him. He looked his surprise at sight of the last article.
"You didn't give me any order, sir," explained the man, "but, bein'
as I'm a bit of a tilor myself, I thought as 'ow you wouldn't mind--"
Hemming interrupted him with uplifted hand.
"It was very kind of you," he said, "and I am sure it is an excellent
fit. See if you can't find a sovereign among that change on the
table."
As he rode through the great gates, Hemming caught sight of Miss
Tetson along the road. At sound of his horse's hoofs, she turned in
her saddle and waved her hand. He touched his little white stallion
into that renowned sliding run that had made it famous in Pernambuco.
They rode together for over an hour. Hicks did not turn out that
morning.
Mr. Valentine Hicks was young, and an American. Though he had been
born in Boston, he lacked something in breeding,--a very shadowy
something that would correct itself as life took him in hand. Though
he had been an undergraduate of Harvard University for two years, he
displayed to Hemming's mind a childish ignorance of men and books.
No doubt he had practised the arts of drop-kicking and tackling with
distinction, for he was big and well muscled. He was distantly
connected with the Tetsons, and had joined them in Pernamba soon
after their arrival in the country, and two years previous to the
opening of this narrative, to act as Tetson's private secretary. At
first Mr. Hicks looked with suspicion upon the wandering Englishman.
He was in an unsettled frame of mind at the time, poor fellow. He
saw in Hemming a dangerous rival to his own monopoly of Miss Tetson.
Already the lady was talking about some sort of book the duffer had
written.
A few days after Hemming's arrival, the army, to the number of four
hundred rank and file and twenty-six officers, was drawn up for the
President's inspection. Hemming rode with Tetson, and the little
brown soldiers wondered at the frosty glitter of his eye-glass. His
mount was the same upon which he had entered the country,--a white,
native-bred stallion, the gift of one McPhey, a merchant in
Pernambuco. Miss Tetson and Hicks, each followed by a groom, trotted
aimlessly about the waiting ranks, much to Hemming's disgust. Tetson
lit the inevitable yellow weed.
"What do you think of them?" he asked, waving his hand toward the
troops.
"They look to me as if they were stuffed with bran," answered the
Englishman, "and their formation is all wrong."
"Ah," said Tetson, sadly crestfallen.
Presently he touched Hemming's knee.
"If you will take them in hand,--the whole lopsided consignment, from
the muddy-faced colonel down,--why, I'll be your everlasting friend,"
he said.
Hemming stared at them, pondering.
"It will mean enemies for me," he replied.
"No, I can answer for everything but their drill," said the other.
Hemming saluted, and, wheeling the white stallion, rode alone up and
down the uneven ranks. His face was set in severe lines, but behind
the mask lurked mirth and derision at the pettiness of his
high-styled office.
"Commander-in-chief," he said, and, putting his mount to a canter,
completely circled his command in a fraction of a minute.
"I shall begin to lick them into shape to-morrow," he said to Tetson.
The little officers, clanging their big cavalry sabres, marched their
little brown troops away to the barracks. The President looked
wistfully after them, and said: "I can mount three hundred of them,
Hemming. I call it a pretty good army, for all its lack of style."
"I call it half a battalion of duffers," said Hemming to himself.
Later, the new commander-in-chief and the private secretary sat
together in the former's quarters.
"I do not quite understand this Pernamba idea," said Hemming. "Is it
business, or is it just an unusual way of spending money?"
"I don't know what the old man is driving at myself," replied Hicks,
"but of one thing I am sure: there's more money put into it than
there is in it. The army is a pretty expensive toy, for instance.
Just what it is for I do not know. The only job it ever tried was
collecting rents, and it made a mess of that. We don't sell enough
coffee in a year to stand those duffers a month's pay. We get
skinned right and left back here and down on the coast. Mr. Tetson
thinks he still possesses a clear business head, but the fact is he
cannot understand his own bookkeeping. It's no fun running a
hundred-square-mile ranch, with a fair-sized town thrown in."
Hemming wrinkled his forehead, and stared vacantly out of the window.
Below him a gray parrot, the property of Miss Tetson, squawked in an
orange-tree.
"If I had money, I should certainly live somewhere else. Why the
devil he keeps his wife and daughter here, I don't see."
Just then the secretary caught the faint strumming of a banjo, and
left hurriedly, without venturing an explanation. He found Miss
Tetson in her favourite corner of the garden, where roses grew
thickest, and breadfruit-trees made a canopy of green shade. A
fountain splashed softly beside the stone bench whereon she sat, and
near by stood a little brown crane watching the water with eyes like
yellow jewels.
The girl had changed from her riding-habit into a white gown, such as
she wore almost every day. But now Hicks saw her with new eyes. She
seemed to him more beautiful than he had dreamed a woman could be.
Yesterday he had thought, in his indolent way, that he loved her.
Now he knew it, and his heart seemed to leap and pause in a mad sort
of fear. The look of well-fed satisfaction passed away from him. He
stood there between the roses like a fool,--he who had come down to
the garden so carelessly, with some jest on his lips.
"Something will happen now," she said, and smiled up at him. Hicks
wondered what she meant.
"It is too hot to have anything happen," he replied.
"That is the matter with us,--it is too hot, always too hot, and we
are too tired," she said, "but Mr. Hemming does not seem to mind the
heat. I think that something interesting will happen now."
This was like a knife in the man's heart, for he was learning to like
the Englishman.
The girl looked at the little crane by the fountain. Hicks stood for
a moment, trying to smile. But it was hard work to look as if he did
not care. "Lord, what an ass I have been," he said to himself, but
aloud he stammered something about their rides together, and their
friendship.
"Oh, you can ride very well," she laughed, "but--"
She did not finish the remark, and the secretary, after a painful
scrutiny of the silent banjo in her lap, went away to the stables and
ordered his horse. But a man is a fool to ride hard along the bank
of a Brazilian river in the heat of the afternoon.
From one of the windows of his cool room, Hemming watched the
departure of the President's private secretary. He remembered what
Tetson had said of the boy,--"too young to associate with men."
But youth is a thing easily mended, thought Hemming.
Somehow--perhaps only in size--Hicks recalled O'Rourke to his mind;
and back to him came the days of their good-comradeship. He wondered
where O'Rourke was now, and what he was busy about. He had seen him
last in Labrador, where they had spent a month together, salmon
fishing, and up to that time O'Rourke had found no trace of Miss
Hudson. Ellis's information had proved useless. Disgusted at the
deception practised upon him, the poor fellow had ceased to speak of
the matter, even with his dearest friend during night-watches by the
camp-fire.