THE THING THAT HAPPENED
Hicks came along the homeward road at dusk. Lights were glowing
above the strong walls and behind the straight trunks of the palms.
A mist that one might smell lay along the course of the river. Hicks
rode heavily and with the air of one utterly oblivious to his
surroundings. But at the gateway of the officers' mess he looked up.
Captain Santosa was in the garden, a vision of white and gold and
dazzling smile. He hurried to the gate.
"Ah, my dear Hicks, you are in time for our small cocktails, and then
dinner. But for this riding so hard, I can call you nothing but a
fool."
"Thanks very much," replied the American, dismounting slowly, "and as
to what you call me, old man, I'm not at all particular." The
woebegone expression of his plump face was almost ludicrous.
Santosa whistled, and presently an orderly came and took Valentine's
horse. The two entered the building arm in arm, and the secretary
swayed as he walked.
Five or six of the native officers were already in the mess-room,
swallowing mild swizzles, and talking quietly. They greeted Hicks
affectionately.
"This man," said Santosa, "had his horse looking like a
shaving-brush, and I know nothing in English so suitable to call him
as this," and he swore vigorously in Portuguese.
"Stow that rot," said Hicks, "can't you see I'm fit as a fiddle; and
for Heaven's sake move some liquor my way, will you?" His request
was speedily complied with, and he helped himself recklessly from the
big decanter.
The dinner was long and hot, and Valentine Hicks, forgetting utterly
his Harvard manner, dropped his head on the table, between his
claret-glass and coffee-cup, and dreamed beastly dreams. The swarthy
Brazilians talked and smoked, and sent away the decanters to be
refilled. The stifling air held the tobacco smoke above the table.
The cotton-clad servants moved on noiseless feet.
"These Americans,--dear heaven," spoke a fat major, softly.
"I am fond of Hicks," said Santosa, laying his hand on the youth's
unconscious shoulder. A slim lieutenant, who had held a commission
in a Brazilian regiment stationed in Rio, looked at the captain.
"The Americans are harmless," he said. "They mind their own
business,--or better still, they let us mind it for them. The
President--bah! And our dear Valentine. If he gets enough to eat,
and clothes cut in the English way, and some one to listen to his
little stories of how he used to play golf at Harvard, he is content.
But this Englishman,--this Señor Hemming,--he is quite different."
"Did not you at one time play golf?" asked Santosa, calmly.
"Three times, in Florida," replied the lieutenant, "and with me
played a lady, who talked at her ease and broke two clubs in one
morning. She was of a fashionable convent named Smith, but this did
not deter her from the free expression of her thoughts."
"Stir up Señor Hicks, that we may hear two fools at the same time,"
said the colonel.
"Take my word for it, colonel, that Valentine is not a fool," said
Santosa, lightly. "He is very young."
"Have you nothing to say for me?" asked the slim lieutenant,
good-naturedly.
"You know what I think of you all," replied Santosa, without heat.
The conversation was carried on in Portuguese, and now ran into angry
surmises as to the President's reason for placing Hemming in command.
It was close upon midnight when Hicks awoke. He straightened himself
in his chair and blinked at Santosa, who alone, of the whole mess,
remained at table.
"You have had a little nap," said the Brazilian.
Hicks looked at him for awhile in silence. Then he got to his feet,
and leaned heavily on the table.
"I'll walk home, old tea-cosey. Tell your nigger to give my gee
something to eat, will you?"
"You do not look well, my dear Valentine. You had better stay here
until morning," said Santosa.
Hicks swore, and then begged the other's pardon.
"Am I drunk, old chap? Do I look that way?" he asked.
Captain Santosa laughed. "You look like a man with a grudge against
some one," he answered. "Perhaps you have a touch of fever,
otherwise I know you would have good taste enough to conceal the
grudge. A gentleman suffers--and smiles."
It was past two o'clock in the morning, and Hemming was lying flat on
his back, smoking a cigarette in the dark. He had been writing
verses, and letters which he did not intend to mail, until long past
midnight. And now he lay wide-eyed on his bed, kept awake by the
restless play of his thoughts.
His windows were all open, and he could hear a stirring of wind in
the crests of the taller trees. His reveries were disturbed by a
stumbling of feet in the room beyond, and suddenly Valentine Hicks
stood in the doorway. By the faint light Hemming made out the big,
drooping shoulders and the attitude of weariness. He sat up quickly,
and pushed his feet into slippers.
"That you, Hicks?" he asked.
"Don't talk to me, you damn traitor!" said Hicks.
Hemming frowned, and tossed his cigarette into the night.
"If you will be so good as to turn on the light, I'll get the
quinine," he said.
The secretary laughed.
"Quinine!" he cried; "you fool! I believe an Englishman would
recommend some blasted medicine to a man in hell."
"You're not there yet," replied Hemming. He was bending over an open
drawer of his desk, feeling about among papers and bottles for the
box of pills. Hicks drew something from his pocket and laid it
softly on the table.
"Good morning," he said. "I intended to kick up a row but I've
changed my mind. Hand over your pills and I'll go to bed."
When he awoke next day, it was only to a foolish delirium. The
doctor looked at him, and then at Hemming.
"I suppose you can give it a name," he said.
Hemming nodded.
"I've had it myself," he replied.
The President, followed by his daughter, came into the room. Hicks
recognized the girl.
"Marion," he said, and when she bent over him, "something has
happened after all."
She looked up at Hemming with a colourless face. Her eyes were brave
enough, but the pitiful expression of her mouth touched him with a
sudden painful remembrance. During the hours of daylight the doctor
and Miss Tetson watched by the bedside, moving silently and speaking
in whispers in the darkened room.
The doctor was an Englishman somewhat beyond middle age, with a past
well buried. In the streets and on the trail his manner was short
almost to rudeness. He often spoke bitterly and lightly of those
things which most men love and respect. In the sick-room, be it in
the rich man's villa or in the mud hut of the plantation labourer, he
spoke softly, and his hands were gentle as a woman's.
Hemming had been working with his little army all day, and, after
dining at the mess, he changed and relieved Miss Tetson and the
doctor. Before leaving the room, the girl turned to him nervously.
"Did you see Valentine last night?" she asked.
Hemming told her that Hicks had come to his room for quinine.
"Good night, and please take good care of him," she said.
The Englishman screwed his eye-glass into place, and glared at her
uneasily. "Hicks is a good sort," he said, "but he is not the kind
for this country. Neither are you, Miss Tetson. But it's nuts for
me,--this playing soldier at another man's expense."
He paused, and she waited, a little impatiently, for him to go on.
"What I wanted to say," he continued, "is that there is one thing
that goes harder with a man than yellow fever. I--ah--have
experienced both. Hicks is a decent chap," he concluded, lamely.
Miss Tetson smiled and held out her hand.
"If he should want me in the night, please call me. I will not be
asleep," she said.
Hemming, for all his rolling, had gathered a good deal of moss in the
shape of handiness and out-of-the-way knowledge. Twice during the
night he bathed the sick man; with ice and alcohol. Many times he
lifted the burning head and held water to the hot lips. Sometimes he
talked to him, very low, of the North and the blue sea, and thus
brought sleep back to the glowing eyes. The windows were open and
the blinds up, and a white moon walked above the gardens.
Just before dawn, Hemming dozed for a few minutes in his chair. He
was awakened by some movement, and, opening his eyes, beheld Miss
Tetson at the bedside. Hicks was sleeping, with his tired face
turned toward the window. The girl touched his forehead tenderly
with her lips.
Hemming closed his eyes again, and kept them so until he heard her
leave the room,--a few light footsteps and a soft trailing of skirts.
Then, in his turn, he bent above the sleeper.
"If this takes you off, old chap, perhaps it will be better," he said.
But in his inmost soul he did not believe this bitter distrust of
women that his own brain had built up for him out of memory and
weariness.