CHAPTER I.

THE UNSUSPECTED CITY

Hemming happened upon the city of Pernamba on the evening of a sultry day in April. He manifested no surprise beyond straightening his monocle in his eye.

"Hope they have some English soda-water down there," he said to the heavy foliage about him, "but I suppose it would be hardly fair to expect an ice factory so far from the coast." For a second a vision of tall glasses and ice that clinked came to his mind's eye. He remembered the cool dining-rooms of his friends in Pernambuco. He spurred his native-bred steed to a hesitating trot along the narrow, hoof-worn path that led down to the valley. At a mud and timber hut set beneath banana-trees, and backed by a tiny field, he drew rein. A woman sat before the door, looking cool and at ease in her scanty cotton dress. A naked child chased a pig among the bananas. Hemming greeted the woman in Portuguese. She gave him humble greeting in return. The pig and the baby came near to listen. Hemming swung his feet free from the stirrups, to straighten the kink out of his knees. He pushed back his pith helmet, and lit a cigarette.

"What is the name of the town?" he asked, smiling reassuringly.

The woman told him, standing respectfully on the earthen threshold. Such square shoulders and clear eyes as this Englishman's were not every-day sights in Pernamba.

"May a stranger find entertainment there?" he inquired.

"Yes," she replied, "and the great man who owns it is generous to strangers. He is a big man, full of wisdom, smoking eternally a yellow cigar not of this country."

Hemming dismounted, the better to rest his horse. Although he had ridden all that day and the day before, he felt no fatigue himself. The tropical sun, the narrow water-cut paths, and the clambering vines held in the heated air and luring him with strange flowers, brought him no terror. But he polished his monocle and sighed uneasily, for his store of _milreis_ had dwindled since leaving Pernambuco a week before to a sum equalling about eleven pounds in English money.

"Has this man an army?" he asked.

"Truly a great army," replied the woman, "for I have seen it myself, riding after thieves. It numbers five hundred men, all armed, and wearing white tunics, and all paid for by this man. He must be richer than a king to support so grand an army."

Hemming smiled toward the white and red roofs and clumps of foliage in the valley, thinking, maybe, of his own old regiment, of Aldershot during a review, of the hill batteries that had supported the infantry advance in India, and of the fifty regiments under canvas in Tampa.

"I crave a drink," he said,--"a finger of your good casash in a bowl of cool water."

The woman brought it, smiling with hospitality, and would not accept the ragged bill which he held out to her.

"It is a pleasure," cried she, "to slake the thirst of so distinguished a señor."

Hemming bowed gravely, a smile lifting his upturned, pale moustache. The baby came close, on all fours, and examined his yellow riding-boots and straight spurs. Hemming patted the small one's limp black hair.

"This is a kindly world," he said in English, then to the woman: "Let thy son wear this ring,--see, it fits his thumb. Should any man ask the name of his friend, say it is Hemming, an Englishman."

He pushed the child gently toward its mother, and, swinging to his saddle, rode down toward the city. His gray eyes took in everything,--the yellowing fruit, the fields of cane, the mud huts of the poor, the thin horses of the charcoal-burners crowding out of the trail to let him pass, and the patches of manioc.

All this he beheld with satisfaction. In a thin book he made a note, thus: "Pernamba, name of town evidently run by a governor of independent spirit. Army of 500, evidently mounted infantry. Welcomed to outskirts of city by kind peasant woman, evening of April 6, 19--. Same climate and crops as rest of Brazil. Eleven pounds in my pockets in Brazilian notes and small coin. What does Pernamba hold for H.H. I wonder? A dinner or two, perhaps, and a couple of chapters for my book."

Presently the twisting path met a highway between royal palms. Good-sized villas, their walls all blue and white with glazed tiles, their roofs dusky red, or else flat and railed about with white stones, each in its separate garden. The gardens were enclosed by high walls of brick, such as he had seen many times in the resident sections of Pernambuco. For months he had lived in just such a house, and lolled in just such a garden.

"The old Dutch influence," he said, tossing his cigarette over the nearest wall. A bullock-cart came creaking along the road, the patient cattle, with heads held low and a straight yoke across their wrinkled necks, the driver walking at their heels, sombre with dust, and daintily puffing a cigarette. The cart was loaded with sacks of sugar, which sent up a heavy, sickly smell. Hemming hailed the driver.

"Where does the governor live, my friend?"

"The President, señor? There behind the white panthers." With the stock of his rawhide whip, the fellow pointed to an iron gate, set between posts of red brick, topped with marble panthers. Each panther held a shield between its front paws. Hemming threw the bullock-driver a coin, and rode on the pavement, the better to examine the armorial design on the shields. He laughed softly.

"Familiar," he said, "ah, yes, a good enough old Devonshire shield. I have admired it in the dining-room of the Governor of Newfoundland. Now I doff my hat to it at the entrance of a president's residence. Dash it all, I have outgrown dismay, and a jolly good thing, too." He flecked a leaf off his knee with the tip of his glove.

"Queer I never heard about this before,--and what the deuce is a Brazilian doing with those arms? Can this be where that crazy American whom old Farrington told me about hangs out?" His brow cleared, and he bowed to the expressionless panthers.

A sentry, who had been standing a few paces off, with a cavalry sabre at his shoulder and a cigarette in his mouth, now drew near and saluted. Hemming returned the salute sharply. This same custom of smoking on sentry-go had jarred on him many a time in Pernambuco. He had noticed the same thing in Bahia.

"I would see the President," he said, and passed his card to the soldier. From a small guard-house just inside the wall came several more white-clad men. One of these hurried away with Hemming's card, and presently returned. The gates were swung wide open; Hemming rode in at a dress-parade trot, travel-stained, straight of back, his monocle flashing in his eye. Soldiers posted here and there among the palms and roses and trim flower-beds stood at attention as he passed.

He drew rein and dismounted at the foot of the marble steps. A tall, heavily built man, dressed in a black frock coat and white trousers, came down to meet him. A man in livery took his horse.

"Mr. Hemming," said the large man, "I am the President." He popped a fat, yellow cigar into his mouth, and shook hands. "Come in," he said. He led the way into a large tiled room, containing a billiard-table of the American kind, a roll-top desk, and an office chair. The windows of the room were all on one side, and opened on a corner of the gardens, in which a fountain tossed merrily. The President sank into a chair in the easiest manner, and threw one leg over the arm of it. Then he noticed, with a quick twinkle in his blue eyes, Hemming in the middle of the floor, erect and unsmiling.

"Mr. Hemming," he said, "I want your respect, but none of that stiff-backed ceremony between gentlemen. I am neither Roosevelt nor Albert Edward. Even Morgan is a bigger man than I am, though I still hope. You have been in the English army, and you like to have things starched; well, so do I sometimes. Please fall into that chair."

Hemming blushed and sat down. The man was evidently crazy. "My name is Tetson," said the President. He rang the bell and a native servant entered.

"Thank you, a Scotch and soda," said Hemming.

"Ah, I knew it," laughed the other, "though I always take rye myself."

The servant bowed and retired.

"I see the illustrated weeklies of both New York and London," continued Tetson, "and I always look for your articles. I like them. I know something about your family, also, Hemming. I have 'Burke's Landed Gentry' and 'Who's Who' on my desk. You are a grandson of Sir Bertram Hemming of Barracker."

"Yes," replied Hemming, both surprised and embarrassed.

"Well," said the President, "I have some blood in me, too. My mother's grandmother was a Gostwycke. Did you notice the three stars and six choughs?"

"I know the head of your house at home, Colonel Bruce-Gostwycke, and another distinguished member of it in the colonies, Sir Henry Renton," replied Hemming. "But," he continued, briskly, twisting his moustache, "you are something bigger than that here. Why do you hold this little half-dead county family so high?"

"My mother in New York taught me to," replied Tetson, "and then this business is different. I did it, as you Englishmen say, off my own bat. A pile of money, a lot of gall, a little knowledge of the weakness of men in office,--this is all about it. Even now most of my friends think me a fool." He gravely relit his yellow cigar. The reek of it was worse than jerked beef to Hemming. "I will tell you my story some day, but now you want a shower-bath and a change. Please consider yourself at home. Sudden friendships may not be good form in England, but they are all right back here."

"Ah," said Hemming, "I have brushed about a bit; I'm not such a--so English as I look."

Tetson turned to the servant: "Tell Smith to look after Mr. Hemming. Smith is a handy man. You will find all kinds of cigarettes in his keeping, and we shall dine at eight. If you feel hungry in the meantime, tell Smith."

He arose and shook hands. Hemming followed the servant, inwardly wondering, outwardly calm. He had met many strange people in his adventurous life, and had become accustomed to luck of every kind, but this big President, with the yellow cigar, was beyond anything he had ever dreamed.

"I am glad I was born with imagination, and have enjoyed the enlightening society of O'Rourke in so many strange places," he thought.

Smith proved to be a clean-shaven man, all in white and brass buttons. Hemming surveyed him with interest.

"I see that you are an Englishman, Smith," he said.

"No, sir," replied Smith, in faultless tones. "I was born on the Bowery. But I have been in London, sir, yes, sir, with Mr. Tetson. We haven't always lived in this 'ere 'ole."

It seemed to Hemming that the h's had been dropped with a certain amount of effort on the man's part, and that his eyes twinkled in a quite uncalled-for way. But it did not bother him now. Even a valet may be allowed his joke.

Soon he was enjoying the luxury of a shower-bath in a great, cool room, standing by itself in a vineyard and rose garden. The shower fell about six feet before it touched his head. The roof of the building was open to the peak, and a subdued light, leaf-filtered, came down through a glass tile set in among the earthen ones. The walls and floor were of white and blue tiles. The bath was of marble, as large as an English billiard-table, and not unlike the shallow basin of a fountain.

Cool and vigorous, Hemming stepped from the bath, replaced his eye-glass, and lit a cigarette. Swathed in a white robe, with his feet in native slippers, he unlocked the door and issued into the scented garden air. Smith awaited him in the vine-covered alley, holding a "swizzle" on a silver tray. He drained the glass, and, lifting up the hem of his robe, followed the valet back to the dressing-room. Chameleons darted across his path, and through the palms floated the ringing notes of a bugle-call.

"I found your razors and your brushes in the saddle-bags," announced Smith, "and these shirts, sir, I bought, guessing at your size, and--"

"What is this?" interrupted Hemming, holding aloft a white jacket heavy with gold.

"Mess jacket of our regiment, sir. The President would feel honoured if you would wear it. And these trousers were sent in by one of the native officers, with his compliments," replied the valet.

Hemming curtly intimated his readiness to dress. Smith closed the shutters, turned on the lights, and examined a couple of razors.

Twenty minutes later, Herbert Hemming, in the mess uniform of a colonel in the President of Pernamba's army, was ushered into the presence of the family, and a certain Mr. Valentine Hicks.