A Splendid Hazard Part 26

"That's true; but I no longer desire to remain a bachelor." The very thing that saved him was the added laughter, forced, miserably forced.

Fool! The words had slipped without his thinking.

"Gracious! That sounds horribly like a proposal." She beamed upon him merrily.

And his heart sank, for he had been earnest enough, for all his blunder. Manlike, he did not grasp the fact that under the circ.u.mstance merriment was all she could offer him, if she would save him from his own stupidity.

"But I do hate money," she reaffirmed.

"I shouldn't. Think of what it brings."

"I do; begging letters, impostures, battle-scarred t.i.tles, humbugging shop-keepers, and perhaps one honest friend in a thousand. And if I married a t.i.tle, what equivalent would I get for my money, to put it brutally? A chateau, which I should have to patch up, and tolerance from my husband's n.o.ble friends. Not an engaging prospect."

She threw a handful of biscuit to the gulls, and there was fighting and screaming almost in touch of the hands. Then of a sudden the red rim of the sun vanished behind the settling landscape, and all the grim loneliness of the sea rose up to greet them.

"It is lonely; let us go and prepare for dinner. Look!" pointing to a bright star far down the east. "And Corsica lies that way."

"And also madness!" was his thought.

"Oh, it seems not quite true that we are all going a-venturing as they do in the story-books. The others think we are just going to Funchal.

Remember, you must not tell. Think of it; a real treasure, every franc of which must tell a story of its own; love, heroism and devotion."

"Beautiful! But there must be a rescuing of princesses and fighting and all that. I choose the part of remaining by the princess."

"It is yours." She tilted back her head and breathed and breathed.

She knew the love of living.

"Lucky we are all good sailors," he said. "There will be a fair sea on all night. But how well she rides!"

"I love every beam and bolt of her."

Shoulder to shoulder they bore forward to the companionway, and immediately the door banged after them.

Breitmann came out from behind the funnel and walked the deck for a time. He had studied the two from his shelter. What were they saying?

Oh, Fitzgerald was clever and strong and good to look at, but . . . !

Breitmann straightened his arms before him, opened and shut his hands violently. Like that he would break him if he interfered with any of his desires. It would be fully twenty days before they made Ajaccio.

Many things might happen before that time.

Two or three of the crew were lashing on the rail-canvas, and the snap and flap of it jarred on Breitmann's nerves. For a week or more his nerves had been very close to the surface, so close that it had required all his will to keep his voice and hands from shaking. As he pa.s.sed, one of the sailors doffed his cap and bowed with great respect.

"That's not the admiral, Alphonse," whispered another of the crew, chuckling. "It's only his privit secretary."

"Ah, I haf meestake!"

But Alphonse had made no mistake. He knew who it was. His mates did not see the smile of irony, of sly ridicule, which stirred his lips as he bowed to the pa.s.ser. Immediately his rather handsome effeminate face resumed a stolid vacuity.

His name was not Alphonse; it was a captious offering by the crew, which, on this yacht, never went further than to tolerate the addition of a foreigner to their mess. He had signed a day or two before sailing; he had even begged for the honor to ship with Captain Flanagan; and he gave his name as Pierre Picard, to which he had no more right than to Alphonse. As Captain Flanagan was too good a sailor himself to draw distinctions, he was always glad to add a foreign tongue to his crew. You never could tell when its use might come in handy. That is why Pierre Picard was allowed to drink his soup in the forecastle mess.

Breitmann continued on, oblivious to all things save his cogitations.

He swung round the bridge. He believed that he and Cathewe could henceforth proceed on parallel lines, and there was much to be grateful for. Cathewe was quiet but deep; and he, Breitmann, had knocked about among that sort and knew that they were to be respected. In all, he had made only one serious blunder. He should never have permitted the vision of a face to deter him. He should have taken the things from the safe and vanished. It had not been, a matter of compunction. And yet . . . Ah, he was human, whatever his dream might be; and he loved this American girl with all his heart and mind. It was not lawless love, but it was ruthless. When the time was ripe he would speak.

Only a little while now to wait. The course had smoothed out, the sailing was easy. The man in the chimney no longer bothered him.

Whoever and whatever he was, he had not shot his bolt soon enough.

Hildegarde von Mitter. He stopped against the rail. The yacht was burying her nose now, and the white drift from her cut-water seemed strangely luminous as it swirled obliquely away in the fading twilight.

Hildegarde von Mitter. Was she to be the flaw in the chain? No, no; there should be no regret; he had steeled his heart against any such weakness. She had been necessary, and he would be a fool to pause over a bit of sentimentality. Her appearance had disorganized his nerves, that was all. Peering into his watch he found that he had only half an hour before dinner. And it may be added that he dressed with singular care.

So did Fitzgerald, for that matter.

It took Cathewe just as long, but he did not make two or three selections of this or that before finding what he wanted. He was engrossed most of the time in the sober contemplation of the rubber flooring or the running sea outside the port-hole.

And this night Hildegarde von Mitter was meditating on the last throw for her hopes. She determined to cast once more the full sun of her beauty into the face of the man she loved; and if she failed to win, the fault would not be hers. Why could she not tear out this maddening heart of hers and fling it to the sea? Why could she not turn it toward the man who loved her? Why, why? Why should G.o.d make her so unhappy? Why such injustice? Why this twisted interlacing of lives?

And yet, amid all these futile seekings, with subconscious deftness her hands went on with their appointed work. Never again would the splendor of her beauty burn as it did this night.

Laura, alone among them all, went serenely about her toilet. She was young, and love had not yet spread its puzzle before her feet.

As for the others, they were on the far side of the hill, whence the paths are smooth and gentle and the prospect is peacefulness and the retrospect is dimly rosal. They dressed as they had done those twenty odd years, plainly.

On the bridge the first officer was standing at the captain's side.

"Captain," he shouted, "where did you get that Frenchman?"

"Picked him up day before yestiddy. Speaks fair English an' a bit o'

Dago. They're allus handy on a pleasure-boat. He c'n keep off th'

riffraff boatmen. An' _you_ know what persistent cusses they be in the Med'terranean. Why?"

"Oh, nothing, if he's a good sailor. Notice his hands?"

"Why, no!"

"Soft as a woman's."

"Y' don't say! Well, we'll see 'em tough enough before we sight Funchal. Smells good up here; huh?"

"Yes; but I don't mind three months on land, full pay. Not me. But this Frenchman?"

"Oh, he had good papers from a White Star liner; an' you can leave it to me regardin' his lily-white hands. By th' way, George, will you have them bring up my other leg? Th' salt takes th' color out o' this here bra.s.s ferrule, an' rubber's safer."

"Yes, sir."

There was one vacant chair in the dining-salon. M. Ferraud was indisposed. He could climb the highest peak, he could cross ice-ridges, with a sheer mile on either side of him, with never an attack of vertigo; but this heaving mystery under his feet always got the better of him the first day out. He considered it the one flaw in an otherwise perfect system. Thus, he misled the comedy and the tragedy of the eyes at dinner, nor saw a woman throw her all and lose it.

CHAPTER XVI

CROSS-PURPOSES

"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Fitzgerald, venturing his head into M. Ferraud's cabin.