A Rock in the Baltic Part 14

"Dear Miss Amhurst, this letter, as I feared, has turned out intolerably long, and like our first conversation, it is all about myself. But then, you see, you are the only one on the other side of the water to whom I have confided my selfish worries, and I believe you to be so kind-hearted that I am sure you will not censure me for this once exceeding the limits of friendly correspondence. Having been deeply depressed during all the previous long days, the sudden reaction urges me to go out into Pall Mall, fling my cap in the air, and whoop, which action is quite evidently a remnant of my former cow-boy aspirations.

Truth to tell, the Russian business seems already forgotten, except by my stout old Captain on the 'Consternation,' or my Uncle. The strenuous Sir John has had me haled across the ocean merely to give testimony, lasting about thirty-five minutes, when with a little patience he might have waited till the 'Consternation' herself arrived, or else have cabled for us to try the gun at Bar Harbor. I suppose, however, that after my unfortunate contretemps with Russia our government was afraid I'd chip a corner off the United States, and that they'd have to pay for it. So perhaps after all it was greater economy to bring me across on the liner 'Enthusiana.'

"By the way, I learned yesterday that the 'Consternation' has been ordered home, and so I expect to see Jack Lamont before many days are past. The ship will be paid off at Portsmouth, and then I suppose he and I will have our freedom for six months. I am rather looking forward to Jack's cooking me some weird but tasteful Russian dishes when we reach his blacksmith's shop in St. Petersburg. If I get on in Russia as I hope and expect, I shall spend the rest of my leave over in the States. I saw very little indeed of that great country, and am extremely anxious to see more. When one is on duty aboard ship one can only take very short excursions ash.o.r.e. I should like to visit Niagara. It seems ridiculous that one should have been all along the American coast from Canada to New York, and never have got far enough inland to view the great Falls.

"Russia is rather dilatory in her methods, but I surely should know within two or three weeks whether I am going to succeed or not. If not, then there is no use in waiting there. I shall try to persuade the Prince to accompany me to America. During the weeks I am waiting in St.

Petersburg I shall continually impress upon him the utter futility of a life which has not investigated the great electrical power plant at Niagara Falls. And then he is interested in the educational system of the United States. While we were going to the station early that morning he told me that the United States educational system must be the most wonderful in the world, because he found that your friend, Miss Katherine Kempt, knew more about electricity, metallurgy, natural philosophy and a great number of other things he is interested in, than all the ladies he has met in Europe put together. He thinks that's the right sort of education for girls, and all this rather astonished me, because, although your friend was most charming, she said nothing during my very short acquaintance with her to lead me to suspect that she had received a scientific training.

"Dear Miss Amhurst, I am looking every day for a letter from you, but none has yet been received by the Admiralty, who, when they get one, will forward it to whatever part of the world I happen to be in."

CHAPTER VIII --"WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME"

A SUMMER hotel that boasts a thousand acres of forest, more or less, which serve the purposes of a back-yard, affords its guests, even if all its mult.i.tude of rooms are occupied, at least one spot for each visitor to regard as his or her favorite nook. So large an extent of woodland successfully defies landscape gardening. It insists on being left alone, and its very immensity raises a financial barrier against trimly-kept gravel walks. There were plenty of landscape garden walks in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, and some of them ambitiously penetrated into the woods, relapsing from the civilization of beaten gravel into a primitive thicket trail, which, however, always led to some celebrated bit of picturesqueness: a waterfall, or a pulpit rock upstanding like a tower, or the fancied resemblance of a human face carved by Nature from the cliff, or a view-point jutting out over the deep chasm of the valley, which usually supported a rustic summer house or pavilion where unknown names were carved on the woodwork--the last resort of the undistinguished to achieve immortality by means of a jack-knife.

Dorothy discovered a little Eden of her own, to which no discernible covert-way led, for it was not conspicuous enough to obtain mention in the little gratis guide which the hotel furnished--a pamphlet on coated paper filled with half-tone engravings, and half-extravagant eulogies of what it proclaimed to be, an earthly paradise, with the rates by the day or week given on the cover page to show on what terms this paradise might be enjoyed.

Dorothy's bower was green, and cool, and crystal, the ruggedness of the rocks softened by the wealth of foliage. A very limpid spring, high up and out of sight among the leaves, sent its waters tinkling down the face of the cliff, ever filling a crystal-clear lakelet at the foot, which yet was never full. Velvety and beautiful as was the moss surrounding this pond, it was nevertheless too damp to form an acceptable couch for a human being, unless that human being were brave enough to risk the rheumatic inconveniences which followed Rip Van Winkle's long sleep in these very regions, so Dorothy always carried with her from the hotel a feather-weight, spider's-web hammock, which she deftly slung between two saplings, their light suppleness giving an almost pneumatic effect to this fairy net spread in a fairy glen; and here the young woman swayed luxuriously in the relaxing delights of an indolence still too new to have become commonplace or wearisome.

She always expected to read a great deal in the hammock, but often the book slipped unnoticed to the moss, and she lay looking upward at the little discs of blue sky visible through the checkering maze of green leaves. One afternoon, deserted by the latest piece of fictional literature, marked in plain figures on the paper cover that protected the cloth binding, one dollar and a half, but sold at the department stores for one dollar and eight cents, Dorothy lay half-hypnotized by the twinkling of the green leaves above her, when she heard a sweet voice singing a rollicking song of the Civil War, and so knew that Katherine was thus heralding her approach.

"'When Johnny comes marching home again, Hurrah! Hurrah!

We'll give him a hearty welcome then, Hurrah! Hurrah!

The men will cheer, the boys will shout, The ladies they will all turn out, And we'll all feel gay When Johnny comes marching home.'"

Dorothy went still further back into the history of her country, and gave a faint imitation of an Indian war-whoop, to let the oncomer know she was welcome, and presently Katherine burst impetuously through the dense undergrowth.

"So here you are, Miss Laziness," she cried.

"Here I am, Miss Energy, or shall I call you Miss-applied Energy?

Katherine, you have walked so fast that you are quite red in the face."

"It isn't exertion, it's vexation. Dorothy, I have had a perfectly terrible time. It is the anxiety regarding the proper discipline of parents that is spoiling the nervous system of American children. Train them up in the way they should go, and when they are old they do depart from it. There's nothing more awful than to own parents who think they possess a sense of humor. Thank goodness mother has none!"

"Then it is your father who has been misbehaving?"

"Of course it is. He treats the most serious problem of a woman's life as if it were the latest thing in 'Life.'"

Dorothy sat up in the hammock.

"The most important problem? That means a proposal. Goodness gracious, Kate, is that insurance man back here again?"

"What insurance man?"

"Oh, heartless and heart-breaking Katherine, is there another? Sit here in the hammock beside me, and tell me all about it."

"No, thank you," refused Katherine. "I weigh more than you, and I cannot risk my neck through the collapse of that bit of gossamer. I must take care of myself for his sake."

"Then it is the life insurance man whose interests you are consulting?

Have you taken out a policy with him?"

"Dear me, you are nearly as bad as father, but not quite so funny. You are referring to Mr. Henderson, I presume. A most delightful companion for a dance, but, my dear Dorothy, life is not all glided out to the measures of a Strauss waltz."

"True; quite undisputable, Kate, and them sentiments do you credit. Who is the man?"

"The human soul," continued Katherine seriously, "aspires to higher things than the society columns of the New York Sunday papers, and the frivolous chatter of an overheated ball-room."

"Again you score, Kate, and are rising higher and higher in my estimation. I see it all now. Those solemn utterances of yours point directly toward Hugh Miller's 'Old Red Sandstone' and works of that sort, and now I remember your singing 'When Johnny comes marching home.'

I therefore take it that Jack Lamont has arrived."

"He has not."

"Then he has written to you?"

"He has not."

"Oh, well, I give it up. Tell me the tragedy your own way."

For answer Katherine withdrew her hands from behind her, and offered to her friend a sheet of paper she had been holding. Dorothy saw blazoned on the top of it a coat-of-arms, and underneath it, written in words of the most formal nature, was the information that Prince Ivan Lermontoff presented his warmest regards to Captain Kempt, U.S.N., retired, and begged permission to pay his addresses to the Captain's daughter Katherine. Dorothy looked up from the doc.u.ment, and her friend said calmly:

"You see, they need another Katherine in Russia."

"I hope she won't be like a former one, if all I've read of her is true.

This letter was sent to your father, then?"

"It was, and he seems to regard it as a huge joke. Said he was going to cable his consent, and as the 'Consternation' has sailed away, he would try to pick her up by wireless telegraphy, and secure the young man that way: suggests that I shall have a lot of new photographs taken, so that he can hand them out to the reporters when they call for particulars.

Sees in his mind's eye, he says, a huge black-lettered heading in the evening papers: 'A Russian Prince captures one of our fairest daughters,' and then insultingly hinted that perhaps, after all, it was better not to use my picture, as it might not bear out the 'fair daughter' fiction of the heading."

"Yes, Kate, I can see that such treatment of a vital subject must have been very provoking."

"Provoking? I should say it was! He pretended he was going to tack this letter up on the notice-board in the hall of the hotel, so that every one might know what guests of distinction the Matterhorn House held. But the most exasperating feature of the situation is that this letter has been lying for days and days at our cottage in Bar Harbor. I am quite certain that I left instructions for letters to be forwarded, but, as nothing came, I telegraphed yesterday to the people who have taken our house, and now a whole heap of belated correspondence has arrived, with a note from our tenant saying he did not know our address. You will see at the bottom of the note that the Prince asks my father to communicate with him by sending a reply to the 'Consternation' at New York, but now the 'Consternation' has sailed for England, and poor John must have waited and waited in vain."

"Write care of the 'Consternation' in England."

"But Jack told me that the 'Consternation' paid off as soon as she arrived, and probably he will have gone to Russia."

"If you address him at the Admiralty in London, the letter will be forwarded wherever he happens to be."

"How do you know?"

"I have heard that such is the case."

"But you're not sure, and I want to be certain."

"Are you really in love with him, Kate?"

"Of course I am. You know that very well, and I don't want any stupid misapprehension to arise at the beginning, such as allows a silly author to carry on his story to the four-hundredth page of such trash as this,"

and she gently touched with her toe the unoffending volume which lay on the ground beneath the hammock.