David Dunne Part 22

"He can't be persuaded, threatened, or bought."

"Then let's get him out of the way."

"Kidnap him?"

"Decoy him gently from your path. The consul of a little seaport in South America has resigned, and at a word from me to Senator Hollis, who would pa.s.s it on to the President, this appointment could be given to your young bucker, and he'd be out of your way for at least three years."

"That would be too good to be true, but he wouldn't bite at such bait.

His aspirations are all in a state line. He's got the usual career mapped out,--state senator, secretary of state, governor--possibly President."

"You can never tell," replied the congressman sagaciously. "A presidential appointment, the alluring word 'consul,' a foreign residence, all sound very enticing and important to a young country man. The Dunne type likes to be the big frog in the puddle. This stripling you are all so afraid of hasn't cut all his wisdom teeth yet. It's worth a try. I'll tackle him."

The morning after this conversation, as David walked down to the Judge's office he felt very lonely--a part of no plan. It was a mood that made him ripe for the purpose of the congressman whom he found awaiting him.

"I've been wanting to meet you for a long time, Mr. Dunne," said the congressman obsequiously, after the Judge had introduced him. "We've heard a great deal about you down in Washington since your defeat of the Griggs Bill, and we are looking for great things from you. Of course, we have to keep our eye on what is going on back here."

The Judge looked his surprise at this speech, and was still more mystified at receiving a knowing wink from David.

After some preliminary talk the congressman finally made known his errand, and tendered David the offer of a consulship in South America.

At this juncture the Judge was summoned to the telephone in another room. When he returned the congressman had taken his departure.

"Behold," grinned David, "the future consul of--I really can't p.r.o.nounce it. I am going to look it up now in your atlas."

"Where is Gilbert?" asked the Judge.

"Gone to wire Hilliard before I can change my mind. You see, it's a scheme to get me out of the road and I--well I happen to be willing to get out of the road just now. I am not in a fighting mood."

"Consular service," remarked the Judge oracularly, "is generally considered a sort of clearing house for undesirable politicians. The consuls to those little ports are, as a rule, very poor."

"Then a good consul like your junior partner will loom up among so many poor ones."

Barnabas was inwardly disturbed by this move from David, but he philosophically argued that "the boy was young and 't wouldn't harm him to salt down awhile."

"Dave," he counseled in farewell, "I hope you'll come to love some good gal. Every man orter hev a hearth of his own. This stretchin'

yer feet afore other folks' firesides is unnateral and lonesome.

Thar's no place so snug and safe fer a man as his own home, with a good wife to keep it. But I want you tew make me a promise, Dave. When I see the time's ripe fer pickin' in politics, will you come back?"

"I will, Uncle Barnabas," promised David solemnly.

The heartiest approval came from Joe.

"That's right, Dave, see all you can of the world instead of settling down in a pasture lot at Lafferton."

CHAPTER II

Gilbert, complacent and affable, returned to Washington accompanied by David. A month later the newly made consul sailed from New York for South America. He landed at a South American seaport that had a fine harbor snugly guarded by jutting cliffs skirting the base of a hill barren and severe in aspect.

As he walked down the narrow, foreign streets thronged with a strange people, and saw the structures with their meaningless signs, he began to feel a wave of homesickness. Then, looking up, he felt that little inner thrill that comes from seeing one's flag in a foreign land.

"And that is why I am here," he thought, "to keep that flag flying."

He resolutely started out on the first day to keep the flag flying in the manner befitting the kind of a consul he meant to be. He maintained a strict watch over the commercial conditions, and his reports of consular news were promptly rendered in concise and instructive form. His native tact and inherent courtesy won him favor with the government, his hospitality and kindly intent conciliated the natives, and he was soon also accorded social privileges. He began to enjoy life. His duties were interesting, and his leisure was devoted to the pursuit of novel pleasures.

Fletcher Wilder, the son of the president of an American mining company, was down there ostensibly to look after his father's interests, but in reality to take out pleasure parties in his trim little yacht, and David soon came to be the most welcome guest that set foot on its deck.

At the end of a year, when his duties had become a matter of routine and his life had lost the charm of novelty, David's ambitions started from their slumbers, though not this time in a political way. Wilder had cruised away, and the young consul was conscious of a sense of aloneness. He spent his evenings on his s.p.a.cious veranda, from where he could see the moonlight making a rippling road of silver across the black water. The sensuous beauty of the tropical nights brought him back to his early Land of Dreams, and the pastime that he had been forced to relinquish for action now appealed to him with overwhelming force and fascination. But the dreams were a man's dreams, not the fleeting fancies of a boy. They continued to possess and absorb him until one night, when he was looking above the mountains at one lone star that shone brighter than the rest, he was moved for the first time to give material shape and form to his conceptions. The impulse led to execution.

"I must get it out of my system," he explained half apologetically to himself as he began the writing of a novel. To this task, as to everything else he had undertaken, he brought the entire concentration of his mind and energy, until the book soon began to seem real to him--more real than anything he had done. As he was copying the last page for the last time, Fletcher sailed into the harbor for a week of farewell before returning to New York.

"What have you been doing for amus.e.m.e.nt these last six months, Dunne?" he asked as he dropped into David's house.

"You'd never guess," said David, "what your absence drove me to. I've written a book--a novel."

"Let me take it back to the hotel with me to-night. I haven't been sleeping well lately, and it may--"

"If it serves as a soporific," said David gravely, as he handed him the bulky package, "my labor will not have been in vain."

The next morning Wilder came again into David's office.

"I fear you didn't sleep well, after all," observed David, looking at his visitor's heavy-lidded eyes.

"No, darn you, Dunne. I took up your ma.n.u.script and I never laid it down until the first streaks of dawn. Then when I went to bed I lay awake thinking it all over. Why, Dunne, it's the best book I ever read!"

"I wish," David replied with a whimsical smile, "that you were a publisher."

"Speaking of publishers, that's why I didn't bring the ma.n.u.script back. I sail in a week, and I want you to let me take it to a publisher I know in New York. He will give it a prompt reading."

"If it wouldn't bother you too much, I wish you would. You see, it would take so long for it to come back here and be sent out again each time it is rejected."

"Rejected!" scoffed Wilder. "You wait and see! Aren't you going to dedicate it?"

David hesitated, his eyes stealing dreamily out across the bay to the horizon line.

"I wonder," he said meditatively, "if the person to whom it is dedicated--every word of it--wouldn't know without the inscription."

"No," objected Fletcher, "you should have it appear out of compliment."

He smiled as he wrote on a piece of paper: "To T. L. P."

"The initials of your sweetheart?" quizzed Fletcher.

"No; when I was a little chap I used to spin yarns. These are the initials of one who was my most absorbed listener."