Kitabı oku: «Pirates' Hope», sayfa 2

II
THE SHIP'S COMPANY

We were on the sidewalk – "banquette," as it is called in New Orleans – in front of the hotel, and Van Dyck was marshaling a number of vehicles for a descent upon the railroad station, when a small man with his soft hat pulled well down over his eyes appeared at my elbow as silently as if he had materialized out of the rain-wet pavement.

"Pardon, M'sieu'," he murmured, in the broken English which placed him, apparently, as a native of the French quarter, "ze brother of my cousin ees h-ask me to fin' out for heem w'en M'sieu' Van Dyck's steamsheep comes on N' Orlean. 'Ees h-oncle been de chef h-on dat sheep, an' 'ee's want sand heem lettaire. Oui."

Van Dyck had started his procession of cabs, and he called to me as the last of the vehicles pulled up to the curb to take us in. Almost mechanically I gave the soft-spoken and apologetic questioner his answer.

"Mr. Van Dyck's yacht came up the river to-day. Tell your cousin's brother he will have to hurry his letter. The Andromeda will sail either to-night or to-morrow morning, I believe."

It was not until after I had joined Van Dyck in the waiting taxi, and we were sluing and skidding over the wet pavements on the way to the railroad station, that my companion said: "Didn't I see you talking to a little fellow in gray tweeds and a soft hat just before we drove away from the hotel? Do you know the man?"

"No; he was a stranger to me," I returned. "He asked a question and I answered it. He is the man who sat two tables away on your right in the hotel dining-room. He said he was the cousin of a cousin of somebody who wanted to send a letter to the Andromeda's cook, and he wanted to know when the yacht would arrive."

"You told him the Andromeda is already here?"

"Yes."

"That's a bit odd," was Van Dyck's comment.

"What is odd?"

"That this little sallow-faced fellow should turn up here in New Orleans practically at the same moment that I do. I spotted him while we were at dinner and wondered if he could be the same one."

"The same one as who? And why shouldn't he be here?" I asked, rather more than mildly curious.

"The same one I have seen at least twice before in the past few weeks. The first time was at our anchorage in the Hudson when he, or somebody very much like him, was the last man overside as we were leaving port a month ago. I understood then that he was a friend of some member of the Andromeda's crew and had come aboard for a farewell visit."

"And the second time?"

"The second time was some three weeks later, and the place was Havana. There he, or again somebody exactly like him, was hanging around the water front chinning with any member of the crew who happened to have shore leave. That time he wasn't trying to mail a letter; he was trying to find out why it had apparently taken us three weeks, instead of something less than one, to make the run down from New York to Cuba."

"Did he find out?" I inquired, with a little private wonderment of my own to prompt the query.

"I can't say as to that," was Van Dyck's half-guarded reply. "What is puzzling me now is his – er – omnipresence, so to speak. So far as I know, we left him in Havana. How does he come to be here in New Orleans on the very day of our arrival?"

"That is easy," I said; "the method, I mean – not his object. He could have come by railroad from Key West in less time than it took the Andromeda to steam across the Gulf."

"Of course," Van Dyck agreed, quite as if this simple explanation had not occurred to him. And then, since we had reached the station, where, upon inquiry, we found that the New York train was already in, there was time only for a hospitable dash to the platform upon which our prospective ship's company was at the moment debarking.

Though I knew all of Van Dyck's guests well enough to need no introductions, the mob of them that was pouring out of the private car Kalmia was overwhelming by sheer weight of numbers.

"Heavens!" I said to Van Dyck as we came upon the scene, "I don't wonder that you wanted help," and therewith we plunged in to bring order out of the platform chaos of mingled humanity and hand baggage.

It was after we had the human part of the chaos marching, with an army of laden red-caps, upon the line of chartered taxis, that Van Dyck thrust a sheaf of baggage checks into my hand.

"Be a good fellow, Dick, and see to it that the heavy dunnage gets started for the Andromeda's wharf before you leave, won't you?" he asked. "I'll go on with the crowd, and have one of the taxis wait for you – T. and P. wharf, foot of Thalia Street, you know."

That was how it came about that I was left alone to wrestle with the baggage-masters and the transfer people, and after I had seen the last truck-load of steamer trunks sorted, tarpaulined, and started on its way over town, I returned to the cab rank and found my taxi awaiting me, as Van Dyck had promised.

It was not until I was climbing into the covered cab that I discovered that it was already occupied. As I ducked for shelter from the rain, which was now falling smartly, a voice that I should have recognized if I had heard it on another planet said, "I hope you found my little green trunk with the others. It has all my dinner gowns in it."

"Conetta!" I gasped; and then I saw what Van Dyck had done, either with malice aforethought or in sheer heedlessness. In the taxicab loading there had been an overflow of one, and Conetta Kincaide had been left behind to share the waiting vehicle with me.

"You – you knew this was my cab?" I stammered, after I had accumulated wit enough to shut the door and tell the driver to go on.

"Of course. Bonteck put me in and said you'd be along in a few minutes; that you'd gone to look after the baggage. How do you happen to be here with Bonteck?"

"That," I evaded, "is a rather tedious story. Later on you may have it for what it is worth, if you still care to hear it. Excuse me a moment," and I leaned forward and stuck my head through the open window at the taxi-driver's ear to whisper: "Take your time, and don't bother to make any short cuts."

"What was that you were saying to the man?" was the question I had to answer after I had fallen back into the seat beside the possessor of the cool voice and self-contained manner.

"I was telling him he needn't hurry," I confessed brazenly. "In a few minutes you will be one of the crowd again, and there are three years to be bridged, in some fashion, in those few minutes."

I felt, rather than heard, her little gasp of dismay.

"Do you mean to say that – that you are going along in the Andromeda?" she asked faintly.

"It is even so – more is the pity. I had committed myself to Bonteck, in a way, before I knew the names on his passenger list."

"And if you had known, you would have refused?"

"I don't know. Most likely I should; and not altogether out of consideration for you. You see, I am quite frank."

"You are; most refreshingly frank. One might have hoped that time, and – and – "

–"And absence and new fields and faces, and all that, would make me forget," I finished for her. "Unhappily, they haven't. But that is neither here nor there. Though I have kept pretty well out of the civilized world for the past three years, there has been a word now and then from home. Tell me plainly, Connie – how much does Jerry Dupuyster know?"

"He knows that three years ago we were engaged to be married, you and I." The cool voice trembled a little, but it was still well under control.

"That is better," I commented with a sigh of relief; and it was better because, if Jerry hadn't known, there would have been chances for hideous complications on the proposed cruise of the Andromeda, or at least, in some inchoate way, I felt there would. "Does Jerry know why it was broken off?" I went on.

"He thinks he does."

"Which is to say that he accepts your Aunt Mehitable's version of it; the one she published broadcast among our friends – that, without any cause assigned, we simply agreed to disagree?"

"I suppose so."

Silence for a square or so, broken only by the drumming of the taxi's motor. Then I took the bull by the horns.

"Shall I tell Bonteck that, for reasons which I don't care to explain, I shall have to drop out of this badly mixed ship's company of his?"

The cool voice had fully regained its even tones when she said: "Why should you?"

"There is no 'why' unless you care to interpose one of your own making. But I should think, with Jerry Dupuyster along – "

"The Andromeda is a reasonably roomy little ship," was the calm retort. "And, besides, there are enough of us to afford protection – the protection of a crowd. If you have promised Bonteck, you can hardly break with him at the last moment, can you?"

"You don't care, then?"

"Why should I care? What is done is done, and can't be helped. Aunt Mehitable thinks I ought to marry; I suppose she thinks I owe it to her to marry and set up an establishment of my own. Perhaps I do owe it to her. I've been a charge upon her generosity all my life."

"So you are going to marry Jerry Dupuyster, a lisping club-lizard who apes the English so hard that he forgets that he has a string of American ancestors as long as your arm?" I flamed out.

"Well, if I am, what is it to you, Dick Preble? Or to any one else besides Jerry and me? Also, I might ask what right I have given you to put me upon the rack?"

"None; none whatever," I admitted gloomily. "Still, I have a right, of a sort – the right of the first man. You seem conveniently and successfully to have forgotten. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to forget, though I have tried all of the customary antidotes."

"Other women?" she asked, with the faintest possible touch of malice.

I was resentful enough to meet her baldly upon her own ground.

"There was a young woman in Venezuela; a pure Castilian, with the blood of kings in her veins. I could have married her."

"Why didn't you?" she asked sweetly.

"I have wished many times that I had. I wonder if you can understand if I say that I was afraid?"

"Mr. Kipling says that we can't understand – that we can never understand. But I think I know what you mean. You may have been Adam – the first man, again – for her; but she wasn't, and never could be, Eve – the first woman – for you. Was that it?"

The taxi was finally approaching the quarter of the city in which our wharf lay. There were other things to be said, and they had to be said hurriedly.

"Let us get things straightened out – before the crowd messes in," I said. "Three years ago we were engaged to be married. One day I was obliged to tell your Aunt Mehitable that the comfortable fortune my father had left me had been swallowed up in an exhausted Colorado gold mine, and that I'd have to go to work for a living. She then told me – with what seemed to me to be unnecessary spitefulness – that her will was made in favor of some charitable institution, and since you would thus be left penniless, it was up to me to set you free and give you a chance to marry somebody who could provide for you. Am I stating it clearly?"

"Clearly enough."

"Then she went on to say that the news of my misfortune had preceded me; that you had already been told all there was to tell; and that it would be a kindness to you if I should agree not to see you again."

"And you did me the kindness," she put in calmly. "I ought to be thankful for that. Perhaps I am thankful."

"I was furious," I confessed. "If you will permit me to say it this long after the fact, your aunt carries a vicious tongue in her head, and she didn't spare me. Also, I'll admit that my own temper isn't exactly patient or forgiving. It was the next morning that I had the chance to go to South America thrust at me, and the ship was sailing at noon. I left a letter for you and disappeared over the horizon."

"Yes," she replied in the same even tone; "I got the letter."

"That brings us down to date," I went on, as the taxi drew up at the wharf. "The next thing is the modus vivendi– the way we must live for the next few weeks. You say that Jerry knows that we were once engaged. If he is half a man, there will be plenty of chances for misunderstanding and trouble. We must agree to be decently quarrelsome."

"You have begun it beautifully," she said, with a hard little laugh. "Admitting your premises, what will Jerry think of this taxi drive – without a chaperon?"

"Jerry will never know that you came over with me – unless you tell him."

"Aunt Mehitable can tell him," she retorted, again with the touch of malice in her voice.

"But, for the sake of Major Terwilliger's money, she won't tell him," I ventured drily; and a moment later I was handing her up the Andromeda's accommodation ladder with a sharper misery in my heart than I had suffered since the night three years in the past when her dragoness aunt had goaded me into effacing myself.

There was a pleasant bustle of impending departure already going on aboard the yacht when we reached the deck. Most of the women – all of them, in fact, save the youngest of the Van Tromp trio and Annette Grey – had gone to their several staterooms, and the men were scattered – "dotted" was Conetta's word – here and there, apparently trying to find themselves, like so many cats in a strange garret.

"You will go below?" I said to Conetta when I had shown her the way aft.

"Yes; and by myself, if you please." Then, with a quick turn of the proud little head, and a look in the slate-blue eyes that was far beyond any man's fathoming: "Good-night, Dick, and good-by. Perhaps our quarrel would better begin right here and now." And with that she was gone.

It was possibly five minutes later that I met Grey, the newly married, roving in search of his mate.

"Annette?" he queried. "Have you seen her anywhere, Preble?"

"She is with Edie Van Tromp on the bridge," I told him. Then I linked an arm in his and drew him to the shoreward rail, saying: "Don't rush off. Throw that vile cigar away and light a fresh one, and tell me how the New York law partnership is getting along. Remember, there are some weeks ahead of you in which you won't be able to get any farther away from Annette than the length of the Andromeda– no matter how badly you may want to."

The married lover twisted his arm out of mine and dropped the stub of his cigar over the rail.

"Preble, you're a brute," he remarked, quite conversationally. And then he added: "By Jove, don't you know, I wouldn't be a bachelor again for the shiniest million that was ever minted! I didn't realize, until within the last few weeks, what a crabbed, dog-in-the-manger beggar it would make of a man."

"Thanks," I laughed. "Experience counts for something, even if it is short and pretty recent, as you might say. Where is the major?"

Grey clipped the end of the fresh cigar I had given him and lighted it. He was sparing me a few moments merely to show me that it was possible for him to stay that long out of sight and sound of the loved one.

"The major is in a class by himself, as you ought to know if you've preserved any fragment of memory, Preble. He is down in the yacht's smoking-room, hobnobbing with a glass of hot brandy and soda, and finishing a novel that he has been reading all the way down from Chattanooga. Think of it – hot toddy in this weather!"

"A veteran – even a Spanish War Veteran – has to do something to individualize himself," I jested; and then Grey took his turn at me.

"You are a veteran yourself, Richard – of a sort. They tell me you have been knocking around here in the tropics so long that you've forgotten all the little decent and civilized ameliorations. Why don't you marry and settle down?"

I laughed.

"Go up yonder on the bridge and ask Annette why some men marry and some don't; she'll tell you," I said; and he promptly took me at my word, at least so far as leaving me was concerned.

A short time after this, just after I had identified the two smokers in the wicker lounging chairs under the afterdeck awning as Ingerson and Madeleine Barclay's father, the last truck-load of trunks came. While the baggage was going into the Andromeda's forehold, Dupuyster, looking more English than any Briton to the manner born, came lounging aft and greeted me chirpingly.

"'Lo, old chappie; dashed glad to know you're comin' along, what? Bonty was just tellin' me he'd scragged you for the voyage. Topping, I'll say."

"Topping, if you say so, Jerry. How long have you been over?"

"Eh, what? – how long have I been over? I say, old dear – that's a jolly good one, y' know. But tell me; where is this bally old tub of Bonty's goin' to sail for? Bonty won't tell us. He's as mysterious about it as – as – "

Realizing that he was feeling around in his ultra-British vocabulary for a fitting Anglo-maniacal simile, I helped him out.

"As a bag of tricks, let us say. I don't know, any more than you do, Jerry. Summer seas in midwinter, and all that, I suppose. What do we care?"

"Haw! dashed little, so long as the Andromeda's well found in the provision lockers: eh? what? And Bonty will have seen to that." Then: "I've been lookin' about a bit for Conetta. Did she come aboard with you?"

I nodded. "She has gone to her stateroom, I believe."

The young man whose chief end in life seemed to be to out-English the English lighted a cigarette and lounged on farther aft. I followed the movements of his white-flanneled figure with the gaze speculative. Quite as truly as in the case of Bonteck Van Dyck – though in a vastly different manner – here was a "perfectly good cat, spoiled." I had known Jerry Dupuyster quite intimately in the university days; known him for a lovable fellow with rather more, than less, than his fair allowance of brains and ability. But something, either the bait of the major's hypothetical fortune, or too much idleness – or both – had turned him into.. the speculative train paused. I didn't know what the compelling influences had turned Jerry Dupuyster into, but whatever it might be, it seemed too trivial to warrant the effort needful to try to define it.

Sauntering forward on the starboard promenade I saw that Grey had joined his wife and Edie Van Tromp on the bridge, and that Van Dyck and a lean, hatchet-faced man whom I took to be the yacht's sailing-master, were with them. While I looked on, Goff, the sailing-master, came down to the rail to direct the stowing of the last load of luggage through the open port below. Like some other things in this Caribbean cruise entourage, this man Goff was a new wrinkle, and a rather astounding one. Hitherto – at least in my knowing of them – the Andromeda's skippers had been of the Atlantic-liner class, spick and span martinets in natty uniform, with fine, quarter-deck manners, and maintaining a discipline comparable only to that of the Navy.

But Goff was at the other end of the gamut of extremes; a gaunt, hard-bitted old Yankee fishing-smack captain, if appearances counted for anything; hungry-looking, lank and weather-beaten, with a harsh voice and a bad eye. And to emphasize the oddities, the sailormen he was directing seemed to be all foreigners; another sea change sharply opposed to Van Dyck's former notions about manning his yacht.

As it appeared, there was to be no loss of time in the outsetting. While the trunks were still tumbling into the hold baggage-room, a subdued clamor came up from the fire hold, and the yacht's twin funnels began to echo to the roar of the stirred fires. A minute later the lower-river pilot, a hairy-faced giant who might have taken the heavy villain's part in comic opera, climbed aboard. With a bare nod to the sailing-master, the giant ascended to the bridge, and almost immediately the yacht's searchlight blazed out, the order to cast off was given, and the trim white hull, shuddering to the thrust of its propellers, edged away into the brown flood of the Mississippi, and made a majestic half-circle in midstream to pass the lights of the city in review as it was headed for the Gulf.

Dodging the pair of smokers under the after-deck awning, I went around to the port promenade, where I stumbled upon Billy Grisdale sitting alone with his bull pup between his knees.

"Hello, Prebby," he said, much as if it had been only three days instead of as many years since he had come down to the East River pier, a fresh-faced prep. school-boy, to see me off for the tropics. "Come over here and sit down and give me a smoke." And when I had done all three: "Rum old go, isn't it? If I wasn't such an ass about carrying a tune, I'd be warbling 'My native land, good-night.' Got your life insured?"

"I'm an orphan and a bachelor; why should I carry insurance, Billy?" I said, laughing at his doleful humor.

"I don't know. Guess I've got a bad case of the hyps. Can't think of anything but that bloody-bones jingle of Stevenson's:

 
'Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,
Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!'
 

Teck Van Dyck's a pirate. He's gone daffy over something, and we're all going to heaven in a hand-basket."

Of course this was all froth; pure froth. But there was usually a little clear liquor in the bottom of Billy's stein.

"What ails you?" I asked.

An impish grin spread itself over his smooth, boyish face.

"I'm in love, if anybody should ask you. Everything looks green to me, and I want to chew slate-pencils. Ergo– which is college slang for 'Ah, there, stay there' – I'm as daffy as Teck. Don't laugh or I'll set Tige on you. Say, Prebby, do I look like an invalid?"

"Yes; about as much as Mr. John Sullivan did when he carried the world heavy-weight wallop in his good right hand."

"Yet I am an invalid. Doc Fanning says I am, and he's like George Washington. He might lie if he could, but he can't because he's lost the combination."

"What on earth are you gibbering about, Billy?"

"Facts; iron-clad, brass-bound, blown-in-the-bottle, sold-only-in-the-original-package facts. Fanning's the family physician, you know, and he has gone on record as declaring that I need half a winter off in a mild climate. And I don't know to this good minute whether I succeeded in fooling him, or whether he was just plain good-natured enough to size the thing up and fool the governor – I don't, really, Prebby."

"But why?" I persisted.

"The 'why' is a girl, of course; you ought to know that without being told. She's a lulu and a charmer, and if I can't marry her I'll end it all with a bare bodkin. Her name? I'm going to tell you, Prebby; and, again, if you laugh, I'll make Tige bite you. It's Edith."

"Not Edie Van Tromp!"

"Prebby, you're the one only and original wizard. You could make your fortune if you should set up as a guesser."

"Ye gods and little children!" I commented. "Edie Van Tromp is eighteen, if I remember correctly; and you are – "

"I was twenty a few days ago, if you don't mind," he returned, tickling the cropped ears of the bull pup. And then: "'Crazy,' you say? Maybe so – quite likely so. I've got to keep the pace, you know. This little ship's full of crazy people. I'm crazy about Edie, and, if you listen to what you hear, Jerry Dupuyster's crazy about Conetta Kincaide – just like you used to be – and Jack Grey's crazy about his Annette, and Ingerson and Teck are both crazy about Madeleine Barclay. So there you are. And if the wind gets around into the sour east, Teck's going to sink the ship in the deep-blue Caribbean, and drown us all – all but Madeleine – and live happily ever after. Apropos of nothing at all, Prebby, this is a rotten cigar you gave me, and I'm all mussed up and discouraged. What's that bell clanging about?"

"It is striking five bells in the first night watch – otherwise, or landsman-wise, half-past ten o'clock."

"Good! – excellent good. Let's turn in, so we can turn out bright and early for our first shot at the blue water. What do you say?"

I said the required word, and we went below to our respective staterooms. The next morning when I turned out and drew aside the curtain shading the stateroom port light, the sun was shining brightly, and for a horizon there were only the tumbling wavelets of the Gulf of Mexico.