THIS FORTUNE
This Fortune you speak of, tell me, what sort of creature is she, to
have the good things of the world so in her hands?--_The Inferno of
Dante Alighieri_.
The second of my Argonauts was of quite another sort. Whatever
graces of body and mind Nature has to give, she had given him--and he
had wasted them. With his invincible and dauntless youth he might
have been a companion for Cortez and stout Bernal Diaz, a Crusader,
almost anything he chose, and he was--I borrow the phrase of a better
man than I--a Camp-Follower of Fortune, a wasted man. The outskirts
of the world are full of them. That such things can be, that men can
be born so strong, so lovable, and then be wasted, seems to me the
most inexplicable of the caprices of that Fortune which puzzled Dante
Alighieri long ago.
Mid-heaven high, the morning sun blazed above the forlorn little
lumber-port, calling the inhabitants thereof to arise and make hay
diligently during the few weeks it still had to shine before the
change of monsoons and the rainy season blotted the world in mist.
The call seemed to arouse little enthusiasm. Over the channel, where
the Rio Bagalayag winds out by the bar, a pair of gulls wheeled
aimlessly, plunging into the yellow water now and then, and rising
with harsh cries. Out beyond them in the distance, where Point
Bagalayag wavered in the heat, a lorcha drifted with limp sails,
becalmed in the lee of Mount Bagalayag. In the one street of
Bagalayag itself, the grassy lane which follows the curve of the
shore, two Chinamen with a long whip-saw were gnawing a plank from a
four-foot log of molave, sawing steadily with the patient endurance
of their race, brown arms swinging in and out, brown bodies swaying.
At the end of each stroke, they grunted rhythmically, and the music
of their industry--_Ugh! Kch-chee-e-e-Arghh!
Kch-chee-e-e-Ugh!_--was the only sound in Bagalayag that morning,
save the raucous complaint of the distant gulls.
As a matter of fact, Bagalayag was waiting in hushed expectancy for
something inevitable to happen. On the shady side of the nipa
church, which still manages to rear its rickety walls at the corner
of the brown and weedy _plaza_, the populace was gathered--forty-one
men, fifty-two women, fifty-two babes in arms, and seventy-three
children of varying sex and age, speechless for once, with the smoke
of their cigarettes dissolving above them like unfragrant incense.
And the gaze of all that multitude was fixed unwinkingly on a
tin-roofed house--the only one in town--which stands on the other
side of the street, close to the water's edge.
In that pretentious dwelling an unprecedented event seemed likely to
happen, for in its upper chamber one of the lords of the earth lay
deathly sick of a fever. Bagalayag as yet recorded no death of a
white man in its simple annals, therefore it sat and smoked and
waited, all except its stolid, alien Chinamen, who cared nothing for
life or death or anything but planks.
Occasionally a voice floated out from the Tin-Roofed House, weak and
thin but full of helpless rage, and at the sound the inhabitants of
Bagalayag wagged their heads and spoke softly. "The Señor Ess-soffti
is not dead--yet," they murmured.
In Hamburg, far enough from Bagalayag in miles, there is a house
which sells anything, from elephants to orchids. Every product of
the animal or vegetable kingdom from one pole to the other, 'round
with the equator and back again, is included in the complete line
which the _Hamburgische Gesellschaft_ carries, for this body is a
true body whose busy nerve-ends net the round world. Men on grimy
ships whose battered fore feet are set across uncharted leagues of
sea, men who rot in unheard-of towns--yet continue to live and trade
in defiance of every hygienic law--men who plod untracked continents
and unknown, sleeping islands with savage followers, are the organs
by which it acts.
Set above all these is the good Right Eye of the Company, the man
who, by virtue of wild-wood lore and craftsmanship, and first-hand
knowledge of the far nooks and byways of the earth, by right of
energy and perseverance, outranks the army of traders and collectors
and stands next the Brain. Herr Felix Schrofft is his name, always
spoken with respect and envy by his associates and rivals in his
strong man's calling. And now, become the Señor Ess-soffti on liquid
Malay tongues, he lay alone at bay in the Tin-Roofed House, and held
the breathless attention of the populace of Bagalayag in Mindoro.
The arena where he fought, that small, bare, upper chamber, was very
simply furnished with a round table, a couple of chairs, a
camphor-wood chest, a bamboo cage imprisoning a parrot, and a folding
cot upholstered in the severest taste with dingy gray canvas. The
table held the fly- and lizard-bitten remnants of a meal, the chairs
were draped with the muddy garments their owner had flung there
hastily three days before, a litter of other clothing sprawled from
beneath the lid of the chest, and on the cot, which stood before a
seaward-facing window, was stretched the redoubtable Señor Ess-soffti
himself, not at all in the mental attitude which our Christian
convention prescribes for those _in articulo mortis_. Despite the
pallor of the cheeks beneath the smut of the newly sprouted beard and
the yellow gleam of the eyeballs and the leaden inertness of the
shrunken limbs which barely hollowed the taut canvas where they lay,
the shaggy, wizened monkey of a man was plainly beset by the very
worst of tempers, which only his extreme weakness kept from violent
expression.
So he lay chafing there that morning, just as he had lain for days.
Occasionally his restless eyes met the beady ones of the parrot, and
the imprisoned bird shrieked with silly laughter. On such occasions
the Señor Ess-soffti shook his fist, a menace which showed mostly in
the convulsions of his face, and muttered weakly, "Sing, you deffel,
sing!" falling thereafter into a murmured torrent of words, as he
consigned the Philippine Islands and all things in them to
everlasting torment.
Even a hidebound moralist, knowing all the circumstances, might have
found some palliation for Herr Schrofft's unspiritual estate. Fever
had stricken him at an inopportune season, and, for the first time in
his life, he faced a possibility of failure with which he could not
cope. Even now the freighter _Sarstoon_ had turned her stubby nose
Mindoro-ward at Schrofft's suggestion. In ten days she would be
lying off Bagalayag, waiting for the cargo he had promised her, and
even when one has no fever, ten days are little time in which to fell
and trim a hundred cubic meters of a wood so dense that it eats an
axe like granulated metal, and float it down the miles of oozing mud
they call the Rio Bagalayag, and load it before the northeast
monsoon--already threatening in the clouds--comes to lash the open
roadstead into a fury of spume and breaking rollers.
He could foresee it all, the excessive sympathy of the _Sarstoon's_
skipper, the meek explanation of the House to the impatient customer,
the commiseration and sly elation of his acquaintances and rivals
that he had failed at last, the universal grunt of "Hard luck,
Schrofft"--hard luck in a trade whose frankly brutal creed discredits
a man for one adverse stroke of fortune as for any other sign of
personal weakness and unfitness. All that must come, unless he could
find some means of thwarting Dame Fate. And so, not finding the
means, he cursed the officious beldame heartily.
Suddenly he noticed that the drone of the saw had ceased. Doubtless
the coolies had stopped to wipe their streaming faces, but Schrofft
was in no mood to seek excuses for them. "Loaf, you deffels, loaf!"
he shouted venomously.
As if in response to his taunt, the music of the saw began again, but
mingled with it came the chatter of many voices and the soft flop,
flop of many padding feet. Raising his head a wearisome half-inch to
peer from his window, Herr Schrofft saw, with supreme disgust, the
sprung masts and frowsy rigging of the monthly packet from Batangas
in the river. Somehow or other the hours had dragged by uncounted;
it was afternoon, and the crazy lorcha had drifted to her haven in
spite of calm and childish seamanship; while he, Herr Schrofft the
indomitable, had one day less in which to do his work. For the first
time in his illness, the hard-pressed little man groaned for
sympathy, and pitying, sentimental, Teutonic tears burned his eyes.
"If I only had just one white man with me," he muttered.
The confusion without came nearer, drawing down the street, and
presently the stairs of the Tin-Roofed House clattered under booted
feet and its fabric trembled slightly. The invalid's face brightened
with curiosity. No native of the Philippines has the combined weight
and energy necessary to make a house shake when he walks. _Deus ex
Machina!_ That was a favorite phrase of Schrofft's, almost the only
Latin of Gymnasium days that had stuck. Perhaps the Man had come
with the Hour. Schrofft watched the door with feverish intentness.
It opened and a white man entered, white at least in fundamental
coloring, although his skin was a raw, beefy red from newly acquired
sunburn, tall, broad-shouldered, clad serviceably in sombrero, the
relic of an army shirt, the ruins of khaki riding-breeches and, most
incongruously, a pair of handsome riding-boots, whose russet leather
was cleaned and polished till it glittered. So far all was well, but
the face--the hollowed cheeks, the dark puffy rims beneath the eyes,
the wavering glance of the bright blue eyes themselves, the nervous
twitching of the full red lips, set in a smile of deprecating
impudence, the keen, high-bred features blunted and battered by
dissipation, all spoke of one thing. Schrofft sized up his visitor
with narrowed lids, and spoke his opinion briefly. "I haf no use for
bums," he said.
Like a mask, the wheedling smirk dropped from the newcomer's face.
"Hock the Kaiser, a wandering Dutchman!" he cried airily, advancing
to the cot.
Schrofft's little eyes burned red. "I am Herr Felix Schrofft,
Explorer for the _Hamburgische Gesellschaft_," he said with dignity,
"and I haf no use for bums. Get out."
"'Tis a certain matter of delayed remittances," the stranger
explained, as he unceremoniously dumped the encumbering garments from
a chair, and sat down by the table. "I must identify myself, Herr
Softy. I am Richard Roe, Esquire, ward of the famous John Doe, of
whom you may have heard. While the remittances delay, I wander,
seeking whom and what I may devour." Mr. Richard Roe gazed ruefully
at the dusty viands before him. "As usual, I seem to have come to
the wrong shop," he murmured. "But here at least are cigarettes. I
will not stand on ceremony."
While the match flared, Schrofft stared at his tormentor with at
least as much of bewilderment as of wrath. "If I could hold my
revolver," he said at last, "I think I would shoot you. I haf no use
for bums."
Through a cloud of smoke, Mr. Richard Roe gazed whimsically at the
invalid. "The question seems to be," he suggested mildly, "whether
the bum has a use for you. And I rather think he has." He crossed
one leg over the other and became pleasantly didactic. "I am not
always what you see me now, Herr Softy. One short week ago I sat in
Don Miguel Rafferty's establishment in Batangas, wooing fickle
Fortune at the wheel. The jade stripped me, I was sold out, up
against it; so I became a thorough bum, in manners, morals, and in
dress. The boots," he digressed, glancing complacently at his
well-shod feet, "are somewhat out of character, I admit. Otherwise I
am a bum pure and simple, as you have three times observed, but a bum
of a quality of which you never dreamed, a masterless man reduced to
his primal elements, three appetites and a sense of humor. Herr
Softy, beware of me. I am a dangerous character, I warn you frankly
at the start."
Mr. Richard Roe approached the cot once more. "Speaking of
revolvers," he remarked, "reminds me that I left my own in Batangas,
in care of Uncle Monte de Piedad." He drew Schrofft's weapon from
beneath the pillow, and inspected it rapidly. "A poor thing, but a
Colt's," he muttered. "Calibre 41, of course. How European!"
Herr Schrofft, his eyes still closed, groaned weakly. It was hard
that his respectable and well-ordered brain should conjure up a
nightmare of vagabondage like this, and supply fitting words for the
figure.
"I came southward to Mindoro," the drawling voice went on, "and at
the first stroke I am half a man again. I have a gun. Here is a
Tin-Roofed House in which to sleep; here is tobacco to smoke; through
the chinks in the floor I perceive sleeping chickens which promise
food. Best of all, I find here a companion for my solitude. Herr
Softy, you may need an heir before long. Behold him here in me."
"_Herr Gott!_" Schrofft groaned again, "I am going crazier every
minute." Suddenly he opened his eyes, for the door swung on its
hinges and a head surmounted by a shock of coarse black hair was
thrust within. At the sight of it, all his aggressiveness returned.
"Son of fifty fathers!" he screamed. "Because you think I am dying
you run away, and now you have the shamelessness to come back! Go
and be a _muchacho_ for the deffel! I shall not die; in two days I
shall be strong enough to kill you."
"It was only his canny Filipino way," Mr. Richard Roe broke in,
coming to the rescue of the unfaithful servant. "He wanted an alibi
for the inquest. Slave," he announced sternly, "I have saved your
life. Fetch more cigarettes and a bottle of whatever burning water
the market offers. Then kill three chickens and cook them with
plenty rice--and no grease. The Señor Softy and I will have a mucho
grande chow-chow to celebrate my home-coming. I am his heir.
_Sigue! Pronto! Madili!_"
Schrofft glared hopelessly at Mr. Richard Roe. "Then you are real!"
he cried. "That boy, he sees you also, he hears you, he obeys!
_Mein Gott!_ You are a bum. You haf no home, you haf no money, you
haf no grub, you haf no chob. And I would gif a hundert dollars for
just one man!"
"Alas," said Mr. Richard Roe hollowly, "I am not a man, and the
hundred is unclaimed. I am the stuff that dreams are made of, bad
dreams. But I have my better impulses, and I feel them stirring at
the prospect of food. I will be a ministering angel to you, an airy,
fairy, army nurse, pressing my cool hand softly on your fevered
brow." He suited the action to the word, save that the hand was hot
and gritty. "Herr Softy, your pulse is rapid, your temperature is
rising, you tremble on the verge of a paroxysm of fever. Where is
the quinine?"
The recurrent hot stage of his disease had indeed seized the patient,
and as it grew upon him he lost more and more his grip of reality
under the mad contradictions of Mr. Richard Roe's speech and conduct,
and the potent spell of the drug which he administered with a lavish
hand. Dimly, as in a dream, the room stretched wider and higher
about him, and as the pulse boomed and roared in his ears, he saw in
the distance a phantasm which he knew was called Mr. Richard Roe,
sitting at a table and going through the motions of a real man. It
drank thirstily from a bottle which a frightened _muchacho_ brought;
it smoked endless cigarettes; it dismembered a steaming chicken with
its fingers, and ate it daintily, ate another, stretched back in its
chair and grunted with content. Phantom or reality, Mr. Richard Roe
began to be a comfort, he made himself so much at home. Schrofft
closed his eyes and dozed.
Suddenly through his slumber cut a well-remembered sound: _Ugh!
Kch-chee-e-e-Arghh! Kch-chee-e-e-Ugh!_ He woke to a moment of
clear-headedness and the sense of his predicament. It was almost
sunset; only eight days were left. "My trees, my trees!" he
quavered, trying weakly to sit up. "I must go and get them."
Instantly the "cool hand" rested on his forehead and, not unkindly,
he was shoved back on his pillows. "You've been dozing," the voice
of Mr. Richard Roe explained soothingly. "What's the matter?"
Brokenly, still as in a dream, Schrofft heard his own voice go
croaking on, speaking ramblingly of trees, always of trees. The
clump of iron-woods that grow at the corner where the mangroves are
thickest on the bank, thirty miles up-stream. The twelve huge trees
that stand up so high and have their tops pleached together. Those
were the ones; they must be cut without delay. He must start at
once, because, you see, the _Sarstoon_ would be in on the 18th, and,
if she didn't get the trees, the monsoon would change. And then her
voyage would be wasted, and the customer would not have for six more
months the wood of unique density which he wanted for non-magnetic
gears, and the House would have to bear the blame, when it was all
the fault of a fool named Schrofft, who lay around with fever when
there was work to do.
At a great distance he saw Mr. Richard Roe sitting with crossed legs,
smoking in long, meditative purr's, and inspecting him narrowly with
keen, unwavering blue eyes.
"You're a rather game little man," said Mr. Richard Roe approvingly.
After a long time he spoke again. "Thirty miles up, you say. Is
there any one around who knows an iron-wood when he sees one?"
There was a new, a compelling quality in the voice, which Schrofft
had not heard before. "That coward muchacho, that Juan, he knows.
He has been there with me," said Schrofft.
"And the tools, where are they?" asked the compelling tones.
"In the canoes, all ready," Schrofft answered obediently.
"I can't understand his getting so excited about a few trees," Mr.
Richard Roe muttered. "_I_ never could. But he's a game little man,
and if he wants his trees as bad as all this, by Jove, he's got to
have 'em." He rose lazily, and stood towering above the cot. "It's
all right, Schrofft. Go to sleep. I'll have your trees here by the
eighteenth."
"You can't," Schrofft objected sleepily, with the unmalicious
frankness of one who states a well-established fact. "You're nothing
but a bum."
"Go to sleep," Mr. Richard Roe repeated soothingly. "Perhaps, since
there's so much hurry, I'd better start to-night. There's a lovely
moon now, like a Swiss cheese. Last night it made me think of beer."
"Those trees on the right bank," Schrofft muttered, trying to rise
once more.
Strong hands pressed him back and held him there. "Schrofft," Mr.
Richard Roe said slowly and impressively, "pay attention just one
minute, and then you can go to sleep. When I want anything I go and
get it, _sabe_? Same as I came here and got grub. Same as I'd go to
the devil for a drink, when I want _that_. I never happened to want
trees, but I'll get some for you. Now go to sleep."
Under the spell of the assuring voice and the comforting grip of the
strong hands on his shoulders, Schrofft's eyelids drooped lower and
lower, till even the clatter of energetic feet descending the stairs
did not cause them to flutter.
He must have dreamed still more then, for strange things happened.
Outside in the village, even in peaceful Bagalayag, a riot rose,
voices of men angry and protesting, voices of women tearful and
imploring, voices of children shrill with excitement, and, dominating
all, a languid, vibrant voice speaking sometimes in English,
sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in crude but vigorous Bisayan,
threatening, cajoling, domineering. Gradually all the others died
away into a murmur of resignation, and then, suddenly, the song of
the saw stopped with a spluttering drawl not unlike the squawk of a
frightened hen. "Come along, you chaps," said the masterful voice.
"Got a job for you other place, _sabe_?"
The response slid in falsetto semitones from a Mongolian tongue.
"Got plenty worl-luk this side," it said sullenly. "No can do."
"Sure can do," said the master. "Got to do, _sabe_? Come along, you
beggars, before I tie your pigtails together."
Then gradually all the tumult ceased, and restful quiet enveloped the
Tin-Roofed House and endured so long that Schrofft craftily opened
his eyes a crack, and gazed about his chamber. It was quite empty.
The heavy lids drooped once more, and he fell into a deep, untroubled
sleep. And as he slept, the cooling sweat bathed his worn body.
Together, the quinine and the excitement of the day had conquered his
disease; the fever was broken.
The first impression borne in on Schrofft's consciousness when he
woke next morning, sufficiently clear in mind, but weak beyond belief
in body, was that Bagalayag was uncommonly quiet, even for Bagalayag.
The droning saw was silent; there was no rustle of bare feet on the
grassy ways, no low murmur of gossip from sleepy tongues, no
straw-muffled booming of rice mortars, no whine of carabao or shriek
of wooden axle-boxes as the tuba was brought in from the palm-grove.
For a moment he lay with an empty mind. Then Memory returned.
"_Himmel!_" he muttered. "I did not dream it _all_!"
At the sound, a doddering old man rose from the corner and approached
the cot. "Does the señor want anything?" he asked.
"Where is everybody?" Schrofft demanded. "Where is Juan?"
"They are all gone," the old man replied. "Only I am left behind.
The Señor Duque took them all."
"The Señor Duque took them all!" Schrofft echoed. Dukes are rare in
Mindoro.
"Si, señ-o-or. El Duque de la Calle Milochentaitres in America. He
took them all, the men, the boys, the Chinese pigs who saw; all
Bagalayag but me--because I am very old. Only I am left, and the
women and children who hide in the houses to pray. They go to cut
down trees, all the trees in Mindoro, I think. It is an order from
Ouashingtone. The Señor Duque says so."
The Duke of 1083rd Street in America! Decidedly, if Schrofft had
been delirious, all Bagalayag now outdid him in delusion.
"Does the señor want anything?" the old man repeated. "If we had
guessed that the señor had el Duque de la Calle Milochentaitres for a
friend, we would not have left him alone to be sick. It was very
wicked, but the Duque says he will forgive us if we get the trees."
At the mention of trees, Schrofft's lips had contracted. But his
mind, as unstrung as his body, was at the mercy of every emotional
catspaw that ruffled it, and the childlike awe and faith in the voice
of the old man brought a long-forgotten sensation clutching at his
diaphragm. "We have been very wicked; but the Duke says he will
forgive us if we get the trees." For all his weakness, Schrofft
chuckled a little at the audacity of it. An unwonted feeling of
dependence took hold of the self-reliant little man. He combated it
feebly. "He cannot do it; he is only a bum," Reason urged. But the
protest of Reason was purely formal, and triumphant Cheerfulness
retorted, "He can do anything--when he wishes to."
"What would the señor like for breakfast?" the old man's voice broke
in. "He may have six little oysters, or two eggs passed through
water, or a cup of milk with one egg in it, or a very small fish not
fried--the Duque says to fry is not good for sick ones--but cooked on
a sharp stick, as He Himself taught me."
Once more Schrofft relaxed in the new and comfortable sense of utter
dependence. "Oysters," he murmured unctuously, and gave himself up
to the anticipation of the plump, brassy-flavored morsels which were
soon to cool his throat. _Deus ex Machina!_ A God from the Machine
of Things had taken his affairs in hand.
As the days wore on, the words became more than a mere phrase. In
the long, lazy, roseate hours which a convalescent knows, Schrofft
thought much, and the well-timed arrival of the mysterious Mr.
Richard Roe at the crisis of his illness and his fortunes, the
unbelievable eccentricity of the man, the nonchalant confidence with
which he had undertaken a task in which he had no part either by
interest or training, all combined to rouse in Schrofft's mind that
superstition which is so fundamental an element in all us Aryans.
The manifestation took the guise of Hero-Worship. An unreasoning
faith in Mr. Richard Roe got hold of him.
The atmosphere in which he lived strengthened the conviction. Mr.
Roe was absent only in the body; the power of his masterful
personality still moulded life and thought in Bagalayag. The
blear-eyed, tottering attendant he had left for Schrofft, anxious,
fussy, mentally helpless, had one warrant for all his load of
troublesome attentions: "The Señor Duque told me to do it."
As Schrofft grew stronger, and strolled out into the village, he
found its people under the same spell. Women and children had
gradually stolen out from the shacks; one by one they took up their
daily occupation; the patter of their anxious prayers was no longer
one of the street-sounds of Bagalayag; they asked Schrofft
trustingly, "When will the Duque bring our husbands back?"
And Schrofft answered just as trustingly, "On the eighteenth."
Dimly he felt the thrill of the contrast, saw primeval Nature and the
lean, sardonic American face each other, and felt no doubt of the
outcome. Many times, as the slow days passed, he looked away to the
black mantle of forest which clothed all the land to the south,
close-fitting and unbroken up to the rough crest of Mount Bagalayag
itself. "He'll do it," he repeated continually.
And Mr. Richard Roe did do it. On the evening of the seventeenth, a
shrill clamor of women's voices ran through the town, and their
owners gathered on the river bank to meet an unwieldy raft that was
warping in on the brown and sluggish current. The huge sullen logs
seemed bound to sink, in spite of the bulk of chambered bamboo which
buoyed them, but standing springily erect on their backs, Mr. Richard
Roe dominated the raft as he did all things else. When it grounded,
he swung himself to the shoulders of two of his men and was borne
triumphantly ashore.
"By Jove, Schrofft," was his greeting, "glad to see you looking that
way." He flipped a hand behind him, and added casually, "There are
your trees," and that was all of the little epic of the forest which
Schrofft ever heard from his lips, except for fragments which he
tossed out to laugh at. But from the tales which the restored
husbands and fathers of Bagalayag chattered to their families, he
gathered a picture of heart-breaking toil and endurance, and
cheerful, laughing resourcefulness which filled him with a yearning
admiration for its central figure.
That night, had Mr. Richard Roe so chosen, he might have become
hereditary lord of Bagalayag in Mindoro, and laughed at the law, the
Constitution and the flag, schoolhouses, benevolent assimilation, and
human progress. Like a travel-worn, unshaven monarch, he sat in
Schrofft's long cane chair, puffing contentedly at Schrofft's
cherished china pipe, while the unfaithful servant Juan knelt at his
feet and revived the tarnished glories of the shining boots, and his
primitive worshippers poured in a stream of tribute, herbs of the
field and fruits, fish and flesh and fowl, indigestible sweets and
death-dealing drinks of home manufacture. On all alike he smiled
kindly yet wearily, with the affable condescension of one who by
divine right might be severe, yet chooses to be kind. But once his
smile broadened into feeling.
"You won't find Lame Duck and Gouty Hen bringing me any thanks for
stringing 'em that way," he remarked to Schrofft, who sat in the
background, as proud as the mother of one chicken.
"Lame Duck and Gouty Hen?" Schrofft echoed, puzzled.
"My untamed Chinks," the Duke of 1083rd Street explained. "That was
a stroke of genius, taking them. They did the work, while the
Filipinos did the kicking. We sawed the trees down, you know--may
not be the way to do it, but we _did_ it--and we three took turns--"
"Lame Duck and Gouty Hen!" Schrofft spluttered with delight.
"_Himmel!_ Such names!" Then he became serious. "How can I pay
you! When you come I say to you, 'I would gif a hundert dollars for
a man,' and you _are_ a man, the finest I efer--"
"That's all right," said Mr. Richard Roe benevolently. "It was good
sport. I wouldn't work that hard for money."
"Of course there's the--the other side too--" Schrofft stumbled over
his words, bashful as a maiden with her lover. "I cannot thank you.
You save my life, you save my reputation, you--"
"Cut out the thanks, Schrofft," Mr. Roe interrupted, with a touch of
smiling haughtiness. "I don't like 'em. You'd better be clearing
out now," the weary monarch added to his thronging admirers. "You're
nice little brown men enough, but I'm sleepy. _Sigue Dagupan_, the
whole bunch."
Two mornings later, after breakfast, Herr Schrofft again brought up
the subject of Mr. Richard Roe's reward. In the intervening day the
_Sarstoon_ had come and gone with her hard-won load, and Schrofft's
admiration for his miraculous helper had grown exceedingly. With the
passion for work still on him, Mr. Richard Roe had been everywhere,
and everywhere had been effective, on the beach, in the canoes, on
the _Sarstoon's_ deck and in her hold, even on her bridge.
Mingled with the boundless admiration, was another feeling which
filled Schrofft with confusion, while it opened a vista to the
sky-line of his lonely life. Since young Erich Schmidt was killed
before his eyes, twenty years gone in Africa, he had wanted no
friend, no bunkie, _kein Kamerad._ But now--Mr. Richard Roe sat
across his table irresistibly reminiscent of some wandering, _roué_
god, who needed but a whiff of Olympian air to refreshen his eternal
youth. Sun and wind and work had erased the signs of dissipated
strength, sleep had rubbed out the aging lines of work, and now he
sat in the _sala_ of the Tin-Roofed House lean, brown, and hard, with
his rumpled yellow hair and trace of yellow beard, and sparkling eyes
half smiling at Life and Fate--not defiantly or deprecatingly, but
with the faint amusement one may find in the vagaries of equals one
knows well.
Mingled emotions made expression difficult for Schrofft, and he gave
speech its most practical form. "Here is the hundert," he said
gruffly, and pushed a chunky little bag across. "It don't pay you,
nothin' efer can--"
"The hundred?" Mr. Richard Roe stared at the bag as if surprised,
but he drew it to him. "Oh, yes. I'll take it if you like,
Schrofft, of course. Much obliged." As he weighed it in his hand,
his eyes darkened suddenly, and the under lids drew tight, as if he
were gazing at something far away over the blue water which lay
before him. Almost unconsciously he untied the cord that bound it,
and a little stream of gold ran chinking out. "Yellow ones," Mr. Roe
muttered.
"It's not much," Schrofft said apologetically, "but-- What are you
going to do now?"
Still unconsciously, Mr. Roe's long supple fingers had arranged the
heap into four little orderly piles, and he was shoving them back and
forth, like counters in some game. "Four stacks of blue ones," he
muttered.
"What will you do now?" Schrofft repeated.
"Eh?" said Mr. Richard Roe. "Oh, yes. What'll I do? Well,
Schrofft, I never bother to plan that out far ahead."
"I'll tell you," said Schrofft, gathering head for a flood of speech,
"you stay with me. I--I called you a bum once. I take it back.
You're all right. The quickness to decide, the way to make
everything do what you want, the good luck, you have it all!"
"If I _did_ have luck," Mr. Roe muttered thoughtfully, "that'd be
enough to clean out Rafferty's bank. By Jove, I'll do it. I'll play
the twelve."
"You come with me," Schrofft urged. "You are young, you have had
your fling; now it's time to settle down. I'll help you, I'll
be--what-you-call?--the balance w'eel. I teach you all I know, and
in two three year you'll be the boss of us all. You'll have a chob
better'n mine."
He hesitated, for Mr. Roe was gazing at him with a whimsical smile.
"Go ahead, Schrofft," he said. "What kind of a job _is_ yours? What
do you get out of it?"
"Ten thousand mark a year, und expenses," said Schrofft, uneasy for
some mockery to come.
"Ten thousand marks! That's twenty-five hundred dollars," Mr. Roe
commented. "_And_ expenses. That's a lot of money, Schrofft. But I
live simply; my expenses wouldn't be high enough to make it pay. So
I'll just go back to Batangas and play the twelve. Twelve trees, you
know."
Desperately, imploringly, Schrofft argued with him, dangled larger
and juicier bait before his eyes. "You might be a partner in the
House!" he cried. But Mr. Roe remained unmoved, even at that
dazzling prospect, and at last Schrofft lost his temper.
"You are a bum," he shouted angrily. "It's chust what I say before.
You haf no home, no food, no chob, no money, and--" he finished
helplessly, "_Mein Gott!_ You do not care!"
"Money could not buy the glorious uncertainty I enjoy," Mr. Roe
replied pleasantly. "Calm down, Schrofft. I'm going out to tell 'em
to get a canoe ready for me."
Late that afternoon he left, with his tattered clothing and his
shining boots and his little bag of gold, and his smile, which he
shed benignantly on the worshippers who thronged the beach. Only
three residents of all Bagalayag were missing. Down the street Lame
Duck and Gouty Hen stolidly made up lost time--_Ugh!
Kch-chee-e-e-Arghh! Kch-chee-e-e-Ugh!_ And up in the _sala_ of the
Tin-Roofed House a shaggy little man, his back resolutely turned to
the window and the leave-taking, puffed savagely at a big china pipe,
and exploded every now and then: "Chust a bum! A good-for-nothin'
bum!" But when the sun was gone and all the shadows on the mountain
had thickened into one, he laid down the pipe and went to the window
and gazed out long over the darkening sea. "My poor little bum god
from the machine," he said wistfully. "Now I must forget him."
It was not so easy to forget Mr. Richard Roe. The memory of him
clung to Schrofft even after his work was done in Mindoro, and he had
bidden Bagalayag an everlasting farewell. In Manila, Mr. Richard
Roe's image dogged his busy footsteps, and when at last he climbed
the side of the _Rosetta Maru_, bound for Hongkong and home, Mr. Roe
was at the surface of his thoughts. "_Mein Gott!_" Schrofft mused,
as he leaned on the rail that first night out and saw Bolinao looming
faintly in the gulf of blackness, far to leeward, "he saved my life,
and now I leave him in the Philippines."
He leaned there, absorbed in a vision of the companionship which
could never be, till the last shadow of the islands had faded in the
night. Then brusquely, as if he awakened himself, he turned forward
to the smoking-room and the nightcap of rum and lime-juice which was
his concession to the luxury of rest. "My poor little bum god," he
muttered, "if he was here, I'd buy him a drink. He's had too many
drinks already, though, poor deffel."
At the door of the smoking-room he stopped abruptly. "Butterflies,"
he grunted in disgust, and turned aside to a settee which stood near
in the shadow, to wait for his drink till they were done. And then,
suddenly, he leaned forward and gazed into the brightly lighted room,
for a voice there had set all his nerves aquiver. "_So?_" he
muttered incredulously. "_Kann nicht sein!_"
Inside the room three men were sitting at a little table with a
bottle between them, all dressed alike in spotless and unrumpled
linen. Their likeness ended with their dress. One was a boy, the
down still soft on his chin, but his cheeks were pasty and he had the
dead eyes of an evil old man. The second was a flabby man of middle
age, whose red face was an expressionless mask, from behind which he
looked out watchfully. And the third, brilliant, flashing, shedding
a glow of life and strength around him, was Mr. Richard Roe in a new
guise.
"How'd you clean up over here this time, Billy?" asked the boy in a
dry, professional tone.
"Well enough," Mr. Richard Roe answered. "Went on my uppers once,
down in Mindoro."
"I travel on 'em all the time," said the wan youth. "Never saw such
luck as I have."
"Get a mascot, Mike," Mr. Richard Roe advised mockingly. "That's
what I did. Finest little mannikin of a mascot the Luck Machine ever
ground out. Found a little Dutchman down there--down on his luck,
sick, almost crying for some trees he'd got to cut or lose his job or
his reputation or something. I got 'em for him. The little beggar
was so glad he gave me a hundred, and I played it on the twelve at
Rafferty's--there were twelve trees--and the twelve came. They
wouldn't let me bet again, so I came up to Manila."
"Hell," said the aged young man apathetically, "what's thirty-six
hundred? I could cash up that myself."
"And," said the other man, speaking through motionless lips, "the
lucky devil struck Manila just when that tin-horn Haines had sold a
mine down Mindanao way. Haines got to working his bellows out to the
Country Club, wanting to back the wheel, no limit, and Billy took him
up and played the twelve, and the twelve came up--twice running.
That's all."
The aged young man stared at Mr. Richard Roe with dropped jaw. "Good
Lord!"--his voice was an awe-struck whisper--"that's over a million!"
"Considerably over, theoretically," Mr. Richard Roe agreed, smiling
coolly at the disconcerted young man. "Unfortunately, Mr. Haines
couldn't cash it all, so I took his notes for everything but a goodly
number of thou's. You may have the notes if you'd like 'em, Mike.
I've got all I want. And get a mascot."
The aged young man went off into a stream of oaths. "Where are you
goin' now, Billy?" he asked at last. "Goin'--home?" His voice
dropped as he spoke the tabooed word, and for a moment, through the
lines with which greed and cunning and indulgence had marked him, the
face of a wistful, heart-sick youngster came out dimly.
"_And_ a wife, _and_ a baby?" said Mr. Roe, smiling whimsically.
"No, thank you, Mike. I'm going over to Siam and buy a small
tin-mine. It's a thing I've always wanted. I may breed a line of
white elephants on the side." Abruptly, as if a sudden thought had
come to him, he rose and filled the glasses, emptying the bottle.
"Gentlemen," he cried, holding his glass aloft, "I ask for bottoms
up. To the Señor Ess-soffti, the prince of mascots. May he live
long and die busy." The glasses clinked and were emptied. Mr. Roe
set his on the table. "Good night, gentlemen," he said, and departed.
But his progress was soon interrupted. Blinded by the sudden
darkness of the deck, he lost his way, and was nearly sent sprawling
by the legs of a man who sat huddled on a settee, a shabby little
man, even in the dark. "What the devil," Mr. Roe began, with lofty
displeasure. He checked himself. "I beg your pardon, I'm sure," he
said with the elaborate courtesy of one who, having the divine right
to be insolent, yet chooses to be kind.
Shrinking as at a blow, the shabby little man drew in his legs. Even
in the gloom the movement had an appealing humbleness about it that
went to the ready sympathy of Mr. Richard Roe. "It's all right, old
chap," he said. "No harm done. Good night."
The shabby little man mumbled something inarticulate, and Mr. Roe,
immaculate, self-sufficient, free from care, strode on and left his
mascot staring blindly out at the dim, jumbled waters flashing by.
"What luck!" the mascot mumbled to the waters, after a long time.
And then again, "What luck!"