The Stowaway Girl Part 39

An hour later, Dom Corria and Carmela met in a corridor. They were discussing arrangements for a speedy move to the capital when Iris ran into them. Her face was flushed, and she had been crying. Much to Carmela's amazement, the English girl clasped her round the neck and kissed her.

"Tell your father, my dear, that he has been very good to me," she whispered; then her face grew scarlet again, and she hurried away.

"Excellent!" said the President. "That old man is a gentleman. His friend is not. Yet they are very much alike in other respects. Odd thing! Carmela _cara_, can you spare a few minutes from your invalid?"

"Yes, father."

"Go, then, and find that young Englishman, Philip Hozier. Tell him that the engagement between Miss Yorke and Mr. Bulmer is broken off."

Carmela's black eyes sparkled. That wayward blood of hers surged in her veins, but Dom Corria's calm glance dwelt on her, and the spasm pa.s.sed.

"Yes, father," she said dutifully.

He stroked his chin as he went out to p.r.o.nounce a funeral oration on those who had fallen during the fight.

"I think," said he reflectively, "I think that Carmela dislikes that girl. I wonder why?"

Philip had never, to his knowledge, seen the Senhora De Sylva. Watts spoke of her, remarking that she was "a reel pleasant young lady, a bit flighty, p'raps, but, then, 'oo could tell wot any gal would do one minnit from the next?" And that was all.

It was, therefore, something more than a surprise when the sallow-faced, willowy girl, black-haired, black-eyed, and most demure of manner, whom he remembered to have met in the gateway of Las Flores early on the previous day, came to his tent and asked for him.

She introduced herself, and Philip was most polite.

"My father sent me----" she began.

"I ought to have waited on the President," he said, seeing that she hesitated, "but several of my men are wounded, and we have so few doctors."

She smiled, and Carmela could redeem much of her plainness of feature by the singular charm of her smile.

"Dom Corria is a good doctor himself," she said.

"His skill will be much appreciated in Brazil at the present moment,"

said he, rather bewildered.

"He mends broken hearts," she persisted.

"Ah, a healer, indeed!" but he frowned a little.

"He is in demand to-day. He asked me to tell you of one most successful operation. The--er--the engagement between Miss Iris Yorke--is that the name?--and Mr.--Mr.--dear me----"

"Bulmer," scowled Philip, a block of ice in the warm air of Brazil.

"Yes, that is it--well--it is ended. She is free--for a little while."

There was a curious bleaching of Philip's weather-tanned face. It touched a chord in Carmela's impulsive nature.

"It is all right," she nodded. "You can go to her."

She left him there, more shaken than he had ever been by thunderous sea or screaming bullet.

"They are cold, these English," she communed, as she pa.s.sed up the slope to the house. "It takes something to rouse them. What would he have said were he in Salvador's place last night!"

It did not occur to her that Philip could not possibly have been in Salvador's place, since G.o.d has made as many varieties of men as of berries, whereof some are wholesome and some poisonous, yet they all have their uses. And she might have modified her opinion of his coldness had she seen the manner of his meeting with Iris.

Visiting the sick is one of the Christian virtues, so Philip visited c.o.ke. Iris had just finished writing a letter, partly dictated, and much altered in style, to Mrs. James c.o.ke, Sea View, Ocean Road, Birkenhead, when a gentle tap brought her to the door. She opened it.

Her wrist was seized, and she was drawn into the corridor. She had no option in the matter. The tall young man who held her wrist proceeded to squeeze the breath out of her, but she was growing so accustomed to deeds of violence that she did not even scream.

"There is a British chaplain at Pernambuco," was Philip's incoherent remark.

"I must ask my uncle," she gasped.

"No. Leave that to me. No man living shall say 'Yes' or 'No' to me where you are concerned, Iris."

"Do not be hard with him, Philip dear. He was always good to me, and--and--I have grown a wee bit afraid of you."

"Afraid!"

"Yes. You are so much older, so much sterner, than when you and I looked at the Southern Cross together from the bridge of the _Andromeda_."

"I was a boy then, Iris. I am a man now. I have fought, and loved, and suffered. And what of you, dear heart? We went through the furnace hand in hand. What of the girl who has come forth a woman?"

There was an open window at the end of the pa.s.sage. Watts had bought, or borrowed, or looted a bottle of wine. Schmidt and he were in a shaded arbor beneath, and his voice came to them:

"It is always fair weather When good fellows meet together . . ."

But another voice, hoa.r.s.e as a foghorn, boomed through the door which Iris had left ajar.

"Bring 'er in 'ere, you swab. D--n your eyes, if you come courtin' my nurse, you'll 'ave to do it in my room or not at all. Wot the----"

"Come in, dear," said Iris. "The doctor says he is not to excite himself. And he will be so glad to see you. He has been asking for you all day."

At Pernambuco, his excellency the President of the Republic of Brazil was waited on by Admiral Prince Heinrich von Schnitzenhausen, who was attended by an imposing armed guard. After compliments, the admiral stated that his Imperial master wished to be informed as to the truth or otherwise of a circ.u.mstantial statement made by the German Consul at Maceio, and confirmed by functionaries at Pernambuco, that on a certain date, to wit, September the 2d, he, Dom Corria De Sylva, aided and abetted by a number of filibusters, did unlawfully seize and sequestrate the steamship _Unser Fritz_, the said steamship being the property of German subjects and flying the German flag.

Though the admiral's sentence was much longer than its English translation, it only contained a dozen words. Its sound was fearsome in consequence, and its effect ought to have been portentous. But Dom Corria was unmoved.

"There is some mistake," said he.

"Exactly," said the admiral, "an-error-the-most-serious-and-not-easily-rectifiable."

"On your part," continued Dom Corria. "The vessel you name is the property of my friend and colleague Dom Alfonso Pondillo, of Maceio.

He purchased and paid for her on September 1st. Here is the receipt of the former owners, given to the Deutsche Bank in Paris, and handed to Senhor Pondillo's agents. You will observe the date of the transaction."

The admiral read. He read again.

"Ach Gott!" he cried angrily. "There are some never-to-be-depended-upon fools in the world, and especially in Hamburg."