CHAPTER V.

CHANCE IN PERNAMBUCO

While Hicks tossed about in his fever dreams, and Hemming shook his command into form, away on the coast, in the city of Pernambuco, unusual things were shaping. From the south, coastwise from Bahia, came Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke. This was chance, pure and simple, for he had no idea of Hemming's whereabouts. From New York, on the mail-steamer, came a man called Cuddlehead, and took up his abode in a narrow hotel near the waterfront. He arrived in the city only an hour behind O'Rourke. He was artfully attired in yachting garb, and had been king-passenger on the boat, where his English accent had been greatly admired, and his predilection for card-playing had been bountifully rewarded. In fact, when he went ashore with his meagre baggage, he left behind at least one mourning maiden heart and three empty pockets.

O'Rourke, upon landing, had his box and three leather bags carried across the square to the ship-chandler's. He would look about before engaging a room, and see if the place contained enough local colour to pay for a stop-over. He fell, straightway, into easy and polite conversation with the owner of the store. From the busy pavement and dirty square outside arose odours that were not altogether foreign to his cosmopolitan nose. Three men greeted one another, and did business in English and Portuguese, speaking of the cane crop, the rate of exchange, the price of Newfoundland "fish," and of gales met with at sea. Bullock-carts creaked past in the aching sunlight, the mild-eyed beasts staggering with lowered heads. Soldiers in uncomfortable uniforms lounged about. Cripples exhibited their ugly misfortunes, and beggars made noisy supplication.

O'Rourke decided that there was enough local colour to keep him, and, turning from the open door, contemplated the interior of the establishment. The place was dim and cool, and at the far back of it another door stood open, on a narrow cross-street. Cases of liquor, tobacco, tea, coffee, and condensed milk were piled high against the wall. Baskets of sweet potatoes and hens' eggs stood about. Upon shelves behind the counter samples of rope, canvas, and cotton cloth were exhibited. Highly coloured posters, advertising Scotch whiskey, brightened the gloom. The back part of the shop was furnished with a bar and two long tables. At one of the tables sat about a dozen men, each with a glass before him, and all laughing, talking, swearing, and yet keeping their eyes attentively fixed on one of their number, who shook a dice-box.

O'Rourke, who had by this time made his name known to the ship-chandler, was given a general introduction to the dice-throwers. He called for a lime-squash, and took a seat at the table between a dissipated-looking individual whom all addressed by the title of "Major," and a master-mariner from the North. There were several of these shellback skippers at table, and O'Rourke spotted them easily enough, though, to the uninitiated, they had nothing in common but their weather-beaten faces. Their manners were of various degrees, running from the height of civility around to nothing at all. There was the first officer of a Liverpool "tramp" with his elbows on the board, his gin-and-bitters slopped about, and his voice high in argument. Next him sat a mariner from one of the Fundy ports, nodding and starting, and trying to bury in whiskey remembrance of his damaged cargo and unseaworthy ship. Nearer sat a Devonshire man in the Newfoundland trade, drinking his sweetened claret with all the graces of a curate, and talking with the polish and conviction of a retired banker. O'Rourke glanced up and down the table, and detected one more sailor--a quiet young man clad in white duck, with "Royal Naval Reserve" marked upon him for the knowing to see. These four men (each one so unlike the other three in clothes, appearance, and behaviour) all wore the light of wide waters in their eyes, the peace bred of long night-watches on their tanned brows, and the right to command on chin and jaw. O'Rourke felt his heart warm toward them, for he, too, had kept vigil beside the ghostly mizzen, and read the compass by the uncertain torch of the lightning.

The other occupants of the table were residents of the country--two English planters, the major, a commission-merchant, a native cavalry officer, and several operators of the South American Cable Company. The major remarked upon the rotten state of the country to O'Rourke, in a confidential whisper, as he shook the dice in the leather cylinder. O'Rourke replied, politely, that he wasn't an authority.

"But I am, sir," blustered the major. "Dear heaven, man, I'd like to know who has been American consul in this hole for the last seven years, only to get chucked out last May by a low plebeian politician."

The speaker's eyes were fierce, though watery, and his face was red as the sun through smoke. He drained his glass, and glared at O'Rourke.

"Couldn't say. Never was here before," replied O'Rourke. He counted his neighbour's throw aloud, for the benefit of the table.

"Three aces, a six, and a five."

He was about to recover two of the dice from a shallow puddle on the table, and replace them in the box, when he felt a hand on his arm.

"I was American consul," hissed the major, "and, by hell, I'm still sober enough to count my own dice, and pick 'em up, too."

O'Rourke smiled, unruffled. "You don't mean you are sober enough, major--you mean you are not quite too drunk," he said. The others paused in their talk, and laughed. The major opened his eyes a trifle wider and dropped his under jaw. He looked the young stranger up and down.

"Well, I hope you are ashamed of yourself," he said, at last.

"I am sorry I was rude, sir," explained O'Rourke, "but I hate to be grabbed by the arm that way. I must have a nerve there that connects with my temper."

A tipsy smile spread over the ex-consul's face.

"Shake hands, my boy," he cried. They shook hands. The others craned their necks to see.

"You've come just in time to cheer me up, for I've been lonely since Hemming went into the bush," exclaimed the major.

"Hemming! Do you mean Herbert Hemming?" asked O'Rourke, eagerly.

"That's who I mean," replied the major, and pushed the dice-box toward him. O'Rourke made nothing better than a pair, and had to pay for thirteen drinks. If you crave a lime-squash of an afternoon, the above method is not always the cheapest way of acquiring it. As the dice-box went the rounds again, and the attention of the company returned to generalities, the newcomer asked more particulars of Hemming's whereabouts.

"He started into the bush more than a week ago, to find some new kind of adventure and study the interior, he said," explained the major, "but my own opinion is that he went to see old Tetson in his place up the Plado. Sly boy, Hemming! Whenever we spoke of that crazy Tetson, and his daughter, and his money, he pretended not to take any stock in them. But I'll eat my hat--and it's the only one I have--if he isn't there at this minute, flashing that precious gig-lamp of his at the young lady."

O'Rourke had read stories about this eccentric millionaire in the newspapers some years before.

"Hemming is safe, wherever he lands," he said. "He's a woman-hater."

A look of half-whimsical disgust flashed across the old man's perspiring face. He leaned close to O'Rourke.

"Bah--you make me sick," he cried, "with your silly commonplaces. Woman-hater--bah--any fool, any schoolboy can say that. Call a man an ice-riding pinapede, and you'll display the virtue of originality, at least. At first I suspected you of brains."

O'Rourke was embarrassed. How could he explain that, in using the term woman-hater, he had meant to suit his conversation to the intellect of his hearer. It was commonplace, without doubt, and meant nothing at all.

"Do you think, Mr. O'Rourke," continued the other, "that simply because I'm stranded in this hole, on my beam-ends (to use the language of our worthy table-mates), that my brain is past being offended? You are wrong, then, my boy, just as sure as my name is Farrington. Hemming would never have called a man a woman-hater. Why, here am I, sir, sitting as I have sat every day for years, getting drunk, and with never a word to a woman, white or black, for about as long as you have used a razor. But I don't hate women---not I. I'd give my life, such as it is, any minute, for the first woman who would look at me without curling her lip--that is, the first well-bred white woman. Ask Hemming what he thinks, and he will tell you that, in spite of the men, women are still the finest creatures God ever invented. No doubt he seems indifferent now, but that's because he has loved some girl very much, and has been hurt by her."

"You are right, major, and I gladly confess I used a dashed stupid expression--so now, if you don't mind, please shut up about it," replied O'Rourke. To his surprise Farrington smiled, nodded in a knowing way, and lapsed into silence.

While one of the mariners was relating a fearsome experience of his own on a wrecked schooner, Mr. Cuddlehead entered the place and seated himself at the unoccupied table. He sipped his peg, and studied the men at the other table with shifting glances. He thought they looked easy, and a vastly satisfied expression came to his unhealthy, old-young face. Though well groomed and well clothed, Mr. Cuddlehead's deportment suggested, however vaguely, a feeling on his part of personal insecurity. He glanced apprehensively whenever a voice was raised high in argument. He started in his chair when the man who served the refreshments came unexpectedly to his table to deposit a match-holder.

To O'Rourke, who had an eye for things beyond the dice, Mr. Cuddlehead's face hinted at some strange ways of life, and undesirable traits of character. In the loose mouth he saw signs of a once colossal impudence; in the bloated cheeks, dissipation and the wrecking existence of one who feasts to-day and starves to-morrow; in the eyes cruelty and cunning; in the chin and forehead a low sort of courage.

Gradually the crowd at the long table thinned. First of all the cavalry officer arose, flicked imaginary dust off the front of his baggy trousers, and jangled out into the reddening sunlight. The planters followed, after hearty farewells. They had long rides ahead of them to occupy the cool of the evening, and perhaps would not leave their isolated bungalows again inside a fortnight. Next the operators announced their intentions of deserting the giddy scene.

"Come along, major, you and Joyce promised to feed with us to-night," said one of them, "and if your friend there, Mr. O'Rourke, will overlook the informality of so sudden an invitation," he continued, "we'll be delighted to have him, too."

"Great heavens, Darlington," exclaimed the major, "you are still as long-winded as when you first came out," and, before O'Rourke could accept the invitation for himself, he concluded, "of course O'Rourke will honour you, my boy."

"Thank you, very much, it's awfully good of you chaps," stammered O'Rourke, disconcerted by the major's offhand manner.

Darlington smiled reassuringly. "Don't let this old cock rattle you," he said, and patted Major Farrington affectionately on the shoulder.

After dinner that night, in the palatial dining-room of the house occupied by the staff of the South American Cable Company, O'Rourke learned something of the major's past life. It was a sad and unedifying story. The major had been trained at West Point, and led his class in scholarship and drill, and had risen, with more than one distinction, to the rank of major. But all the while he had made his fight against drink, as well as the usual handicaps in the game of life. He had married a woman with wealth and position superior to his own, who had admired him for his soldierly qualities and fine appearance, and who, later, had been the first to desert him. Then followed the foreign consular appointments, the bitter and ever-increasing debaucheries, and at last the forced retirement from his country's service. Now he lived on a small allowance, sent him weekly, by his family. O'Rourke began to understand the old man's fretful and disconcerting moods.

At a late hour the superintendent of the staff ushered O'Rourke to a big, cool room on the second floor.

"Make this your home," he said, "and we'll let you in on the same footing as ourselves. Hemming occupied this room last. There is his bed; there is his hammock; and, by Jove, there are his slippers. You can have your traps brought up in the morning."

Thus did Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke become an inmate of an imposing mansion in Pernambuco, with moderate charges to pay and good company to enliven his hours.