Doctor Claudius, A True Story Part 21

"Suppose? There is no supposing about it. He is." And the Duke looked at his friend as if he would have said, "If I, a real, palpable, tangible, hereditary duke, do not know a gentleman when I see one, what can _you_ possibly know about it, I would like to inquire?" And that settled the matter.

But Mr. Barker was uneasy in his mind. An idea was at work there which was diametrically opposed to the union of Claudius and Margaret, and day by day, as he watched the intimacy growing back into its old proportions, he ground his gold-filled teeth with increasing annoyance.

He sought opportunities for saying and doing things that might curtail the length of those hours when Claudius sat at her side, ostensibly reading. Ostensibly? Yes--the first day or two after she had allowed him to come back to her side were days of unexampled industry and severe routine, only the most pertinent criticisms interrupting from time to time the even progress from line to line, from page to page, from paragraph to paragraph, from chapter to chapter. But soon the criticism became less close, the ill.u.s.tration more copious, the tongue more eloquent, and the glance less shy. The elective strength of their two hearts rose up and wrought mightily, saying, "We are made for each other, we understand each other, and these foolish mortals who carry us about in their bosoms shall not keep us apart." And to tell the truth, the foolish mortals made very little effort. Margaret did not believe that Claudius could possibly break his plighted word, and he knew that he would die rather than forfeit his faith. And so they sat side by side with the book, ostensibly reading, actually talking, most of the day.

And sometimes one or the other would go a little too near the forbidden point, and then there was a moment's silence, and the least touch of embarra.s.sment; and once Margaret laughed a queer little laugh at one of these stumbles, and once Claudius sighed. But they were very happy, and the faint colour that was natural to the Doctor's clear white skin came back as his heart was eased of its burden, and Margaret's dark cheek grew darker with the sun and the wind that she took no pains to keep from her face, though the olive flushed sometimes to a warmer hue, with pleasure--or what? She thought it was the salt breeze.

"How well those two look!" exclaimed Lady Victoria once to Mr. Barker.

"I have seen Claudius look ghastly," said Barker, for he thought they looked too "well" altogether.

"Yes; do you remember one morning--I think it was the day before, or the day after, the accident? I thought he was going to faint."

"Perhaps he was sea-sick," suggested Barker.

"Oh no, we were a week out then, and he was never ill at all from the first."

"Perhaps he was love-sick," said the other, willing to be spiteful.

"How ridiculous! To think of such a thing!" cried the stalwart English girl; for she was only a girl in years despite her marriage. "But really," she continued, "if I were going to write a novel I would put those two people in it, they are so awfully good-looking. I would make all my heroes and heroines beautiful if I wrote books."

"Then I fear I shall never be handed down to posterity by your pen, Lady Victoria," said Barker, with a smile.

"No," said she, eyeing him critically, "I don't think I would put you in my book. But then, you know, I would not put myself in it either."

"Ah," grinned Mr. Barker, "the book would lose by that, but I should gain."

"How?" asked her ladyship.

"Because we should both be well out of it," said he, having reached his joke triumphantly. But Lady Victoria did not like Mr. Barker, or his jokes, very much. She once said so to her brother. She thought him spiteful.

"Well, Vick," said her brother good-naturedly, "I daresay you are right. But he amuses me, and he is very square on settling days."

Meanwhile Lady Victoria was not mistaken--Mr. Barker was spiteful; but she did not know that she was the only member of the party to whom he ventured to show it, because he thought she was stupid, and because it was such a relief to say a vicious thing now and then. He devoted himself most a.s.siduously to Miss Skeat, since Margaret would not accept his devotion to her, and indeed had given him little chance to show that he would offer it. The days sped fast for some of the party, slowly for others, and pretty much as they did anywhere else for the Duke, who was in no especial hurry to arrive in New York. His affairs were large enough to keep, and he had given himself plenty of time. But nevertheless his affairs were the object in view; and though he did not like to talk about those things, even with Barker, the fate of Claudius and Margaret as compared with the larger destinies of the Green Swash Mining Company were as the humble and unadorned mole-hill to the glories of the Himalaya. People had criticised the Duke's financial career in England. Why had he sold that snuffbox that Marie Therese gave to his ancestor when--well, you know when? Why had he converted those worm-eaten ma.n.u.scripts, whereon were traced many valuable things in a variety of ancient tongues, into coin of the realm? And why had he turned his Irish estates into pounds, into shillings, yea, and into pence. Pence--just think of it! He had sold his ancestral lands for _pence_; that was what it came to. These and many other things the scoffers scoffed, with a right good-will. But none save the Duke could tell how many broad fields of ripening grain, and vine-clad hills, and clean glistening miles of bright rail, and fat ore lands sodden with wealth of gold and silver and luscious sulphurets--none save the Duke could tell how much of these good things the Duke possessed in that great land beyond the sea, upon which if England were bodily set down it would be as hard to find as a threepenny bit in a ten-acre field. But the Duke never told. He went about his business quietly, for he said in his heart, "Tush! I have children to be provided for; and if anything happens to the old country, I will save some bacon for them in the new, and they may call themselves dukes or farmers as far as I am concerned; but they shall not lack a few hundred thousand acres of homestead in the hour of need, neither a cow or two or a pig."

The breeze held well, on the whole, and old Sturleson said they were having a wonderful run, which was doubtless an effort on the part of nature to atone for the injury she had done. But the days flew by, and yet they were not at their voyage's end. At last, as they sat sunning themselyes in the fair September weather, Sturleson came to them, his bright quadrant, with its coloured gla.s.ses sticking out in all directions, in his hand, and told the Duke he thought that by to-morrow afternoon they would sight the Hook. The party were all together, as it happened, and there was a general shout, in which, however, Claudius joined but faintly. He longed for contrary winds, and he wished that Sandy Hook and all its appurtenances, including New York and the United States, would sink gently down to the bottom of the sea. He knew, and Sturleson had told him, that with unfavourable weather they might be at sea a month, and he was one of the two who voted to go to Bermuda when the accident occurred.

That evening, as the sun was going down to his tossing bed of golden waves, all canopied with softest purple, Margaret stood leaning over the taffrail. Every st.i.tch of canvas was out--topsails, gaff-topsails, staysails, and jibs--and the good yacht bounded with a will to the bright west. But the dark woman looked astern to where the billows rolled together, forgetting what precious burden they had borne.

Claudius stole to her side and stood a moment looking at her face.

"So it is over," he said at last.

"Nearly over. It has been very pleasant," said she.

"It has been more than pleasant. It has been divine--for me."

"Hush!" said Margaret softly; "remember." There was silence, save for the rushing of the rudder through the dark-blue foam. Again Claudius spoke, softly, and it seemed to her that the voice was not his, but rather that it came up mystically from the water below.

"Are you sorry it is over?" he asked--or the voice of the mighty deep welling up with its burden of truth.

"Yes, I am very sorry," she answered, whether she would or no. The sun sank down, and the magic after-glow shone in the opposite sky, tinging ship and sails and waves.

"I am very sorry too," he said; and he sighed and looked astern eastwards, and thought of the golden hours he had spent on that broad track stretching away behind. Margaret leaned down, resting her chin on her hands, and presently she unfolded them, and her fingers stole upwards and covered her face, and she bent her head. There was a mighty beating in Claudius's breast, and a thousand voices in the air cried to him to speak and to say what was in his heart to say. But he would not, for he had given the woman at his side the promise of his faith. At last she looked up and turned toward him. They were alone on the deck in the faintness of the gathering twilight.

"Claudius, you have kept your promise truly and well. Keep it--keep it always." She held out her ungloved hand.

"Always, my queen and my lady," and he kissed the white fingers once.

"Hullo!" shouted the Duke, emerging from the cuddy. "Upon my word! Why, it's dinner time."

CHAPTER X.

How they left the good yacht _Streak_, and how they bade a hearty farewell to that old sea lion Captain Sturleson, and how they went through the hundred and one formalities of the custom-house, and the thousand and one informalities of its officials, are matters of interest indeed, but not of history. There are moments in a man's existence when the act of conveying half a dozen sovereigns to the pocket of that stern monitor of good faith, the bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned custom-house officer with the tender conscience, is of more importance to salvation than women's love or the Thirty-nine Articles. All this they did. Nor were they spared by the great tormentor of the West, who bristleth with the fretful quill, whose ears surround us in the night-time, and whose voice is as the voice of the charmer, the reporter of the just and the unjust, but princ.i.p.ally of the latter. And Mr. Barker made an appointment with the Duke, and took a tender farewell of the three ladies, and promised to call on Claudius in the afternoon, and departed. But the rest of the party went to a famous old hotel much affected by Englishmen, and whose chief recommendation in their eyes is that there is no elevator, so that they can run upstairs and get out of breath, and fancy themselves at home. Of course their apartments had been secured, and had been waiting for them a week, and the Countess was glad to withdraw for the day into the sunny suite over the corner that was hers. As for Miss Skeat, she went to the window and stayed there, for America was quite different from what she had fancied. Claudius descended to the lower regions, and had his hair cut; and the cook and the bar-keeper and the head "boots,"

or porter, as he called himself, all came and looked in at the door of the barber's shop, and stared at the huge Swede. And the barber walked reverently round him with scissors and comb, and they all agreed that Claudius must be Mr. Barnum's new attraction, except the head porter--no relation of an English head porter--who thought it was "Fingal's babby, or maybe the blessed Sint Pathrick himself." And the little boy who brushed the frequenters of the barber's shop could not reach to Claudius's coat collar, so that the barber had to set a chair for him, and so he climbed up.

The Duke retired also to the depths of his apartments, and his servant arrayed him in the purple and stove-pipe of the higher civilisation. And before long each of the ladies received a large cardboard box full of fresh-cut flowers, sent by Mr. Barker of course; and the Duke, hearing of this from his man, sent "his compliments to Lady Victoria, and would she send him a rose for his coat?" So the Duke sallied forth on foot, and the little creases in his clothes showed that he had just arrived.

But he did not attract any attention, for the majority of the population of New York have "just arrived." Besides, he had not far to go. He had a friend in town who lived but a few steps from the hotel, and his first move on arriving was generally to call there.

Claudius waited a short time to see whether Mr. Barker would come; but as Claudius rarely waited for anybody, he soon grew impatient, and squeezing himself into a cab, told the driver to take him to Messrs.

Screw and Scratch in Pine Street. He was received with deference, and treated as his position demanded. Would he like to see Mr. Silas B.

Barker senior? Very natural that he should want to make the acquaintance of his relative's old friend and partner. Mr. Screw was out, yes--but Mr. Scratch would accompany him. No trouble at all. Better "go around right off," as Mr. Barker would probably go to Newport by the boat that evening. So they went "around right away," and indeed it was a circular journey. Down one elevator, through a maze of corridors, round crowded corners, through narrow streets, Claudius ploughing his way through billows of curbstone brokers, sad and gay, messenger-boys, young clerks, fruit vendors, disreputable-looking millionaires and gentlemanly-looking scamps, newspaper-boys, drunken Irishmen, complacent holders of preferred, and scatterbrained speculators in wild-cat, an atmosphere of tobacco smoke, dust, melons, and unintelligible jargon--little Mr.

Scratch clinging to his client's side, nodding furiously at every other face he saw, and occasionally shouting a word of outlandish etymology, but of magic import. Claudius almost thought it would be civil to offer to carry the little man, but when he saw how deftly Mr. Scratch got in a foot here and an elbow there, and how he scampered over any little bit of clear pavement, the Doctor concluded his new acquaintance was probably used to it. More elevators, more pa.s.sages, a gla.s.s door, still bearing the names "Barker and Lindstrand," and they had reached their destination.

The office was on the second floor, with large windows looking over the street; there were several people in the room they first entered, and the first person Claudius saw was Mr. Barker junior, his friend.

"Well," said Barker, "so you have found us out. That's right. I was coming round to see you afterwards, for I did not suppose you would like to face 'the street' alone. Father," he said, turning to a thickset man with white hair and bushy eyebrows, "this is Dr. Claudius, Mr.

Lindstrand's nephew."

The old gentleman looked up keenly into Claudius's face, and smiled pleasantly as he put out his hand. He said a few words of cordial welcome, and seemed altogether a st.u.r.dy, hearty, hardworking man of business--rather a contrast to his son. He hoped that Claudius would come on to Newport with Silas, as he wanted to have a long talk with him. The old gentleman was evidently very busy, and his son took Claudius in charge.

"What is that?" asked the Doctor, looking curiously at a couple of wheels that unwound unceasingly long strips of white paper. The paper pa.s.sed through a small instrument, and came out covered with unintelligible signs, coiling itself in confusion into a waste-basket below.

"That has driven more men to desperation, ruin, and drink, than all the other evils of humanity put together," said Barker. "That is the ticker."

"I perceive that it ticks," said Claudius. And Barker explained how every variation in the market was instantly transmitted to every place of business, to every club, and to many private houses in New York, by means of a simple arrangement of symbols--how "Gr. S." meant Green Swash, and "N.P. pr." "North Pacific, preferred," and many other things.

Claudius thought it an ingenious contrivance, but said it must be very wearing on the nerves.

"It is the pulse of New York," said Barker. "It is the croupier calling out from morning till night 'trente-sept, rouge, impair,' and then 'Messieurs faites votre jeu--le jeu est fait.' When stock goes down you buy, when it goes up you sell. That is the whole secret."

"I think it is very like gambling," said Claudius.

"So it is. But we never gamble here, though we have a ticker to see what other people are doing. Besides, it tells you everything. Horse-racing, baseball, steamers, births, deaths, and marriages; corn, wheat, tobacco, and cotton. n.o.body can live here without a ticker."

And after this they went out into the street again, and Mr. Scratch took off his hat to Claudius, which is the highest token of unusual esteem and respect of which "the street" is capable, and in a moment the heels of his boots were seen disappearing into the dense crowd. Claudius and Barker walked on, and crossed Broadway; a few steps farther, and the Doctor was brought face to face with the triumph of business over privacy--the elevated railway. He had caught a glimpse of portions of it in the morning, but had supposed the beams and trestles to be scaffoldings for buildings. He stood a few moments in profound thought, contemplating and comprehending this triumph of wheels.