The Crusade of the Excelsior Part 18

"Long live our brave and n.o.ble ally, Don Diego! Long live the beautiful Dona Leonor!"

A faint shade of sadness pa.s.sed over the priest's face. He glanced from Hurlstone to Miss Keene.

"Then you have consented?" he whispered.

Hurlstone cast a rapid glance at Eleanor Keene.

"I consent!"

PART II. FREED.

CHAPTER I.

THE MOURNERS AT SAN FRANCISCO.

The telegraph operator at the Golden Gate of San Francisco had long since given up hope of the Excelsior. During the months of September and October, 1854, stimulated by the promised reward, and often by the actual presence of her owners, he had shown zeal and hope in his scrutiny of the incoming ships. The gaunt arms of the semaph.o.r.e at Fort Point, turned against the sunset sky, had regularly recorded the smallest vessel of the white-winged fleet which sought the portal of the bay during that eventful year of immigration; but the Excelsior was not amongst them. At the close of the year 1854 she was a tradition; by the end of January, 1855, she was forgotten. Had she been engulfed in her own element she could not have been more completely swallowed up than in the changes of that sh.o.r.e she never reached. Whatever interest or hope was still kept alive in solitary b.r.e.a.s.t.s the world never knew. By the significant irony of Fate, even the old-time semaph.o.r.e that should have signaled her was abandoned and forgotten.

The mention of her name--albeit in a quiet, unconcerned voice--in the dress-circle of a San Francisco theatre, during the performance of a popular female star, was therefore so peculiar that it could only have come from the lips of some one personally interested in the lost vessel.

Yet the speaker was a youngish, feminine-looking man of about thirty, notable for his beardlessness, in the crowded circle of bearded and moustachioed Californians, and had been one of the most absorbed of the enthusiastic audience. A weak smile of vacillating satisfaction and uneasiness played on his face during the plaudits of his fellow-admirers, as if he were alternately gratified and annoyed. It might have pa.s.sed for a discriminating and truthful criticism of the performance, which was a cla.s.sical burlesque, wherein the star displayed an unconventional frankness of shapely limbs and unrestrained gestures and glances; but he applauded the more dubious parts equally with the audience. He was evidently familiar with the performance, for a look of eager expectation greeted most of the "business." Either he had not come for the entire evening, or he did not wish to appear as if he had, as he sat on one of the back benches near the pa.s.sage, and frequently changed his place. He was well, even foppishly, dressed for the period, and appeared to be familiarly known to the loungers in the pa.s.sage as a man of some social popularity.

He had just been recognized by a man of apparently equal importance and distinction, who had quietly and unconsciously taken a seat by his side, and the recognition appeared equally unexpected and awkward.

The new-comer was the older and more decorous-looking, with an added formality of manner and self-a.s.sertion that did not, however, conceal a certain habitual shrewdness of eye and lip. He wore a full beard, but the absence of a moustache left the upper half of his handsome and rather satirical mouth uncovered. His dress was less p.r.o.nounced than his companion's, but of a type of older and more established gentility.

"I was a little late coming from the office to-night," said the younger man, with an embarra.s.sed laugh, "and I thought I'd drop in here on my way home. Pretty rough outside, ain't it?"

"Yes, it's raining and blowing; so I thought I wouldn't go up to the plaza for a cab, but wait here for the first one that dropped a fare at the door, and take it on to the hotel."

"Hold on, and I'll go with you," said the young man carelessly. "I say, Brimmer," he added, after a pause, with a sudden a.s.sumption of larger gayety, "there's nothing mean about Belle Montgomery, eh? She's a whole team and the little dog under the wagon, ain't she? Deuced pretty woman!--no make-up there, eh?"

"She certainly is a fine woman," said Brimmer gravely, borrowing his companion's lorgnette. "By the way, Markham, do you usually keep an opera-gla.s.s in your office in case of an emergency like this?"

"I reckon it was forgotten in my overcoat pocket," said Markham, with an embarra.s.sed smile.

"Left over from the last time," said Brimmer, rising from his seat.

"Well, I'm going now--I suppose I'll have to try the plaza."

"Hold on a moment. She's coming on now--there she is!" He stopped, his anxious eyes fixed upon the stage. Brimmer turned at the same moment in no less interested absorption. A quick hush ran through the theatre; the men bent eagerly forward as the Queen of Olympus swept down to the footlights, and, with a ravishing smile, seemed to envelop the whole theatre in a gracious caress.

"You know, 'pon my word, Brimmer, she's a very superior woman," gasped Markham excitedly, when the G.o.ddess had temporarily withdrawn. "These fellows here," he said, indicating the audience contemptuously, "don't know her,--think she's all that sort of thing, you know,--and come here just to LOOK at her. But she's very accomplished--in fact, a kind of literary woman. Writes devilish good poetry--only took up the stage on account of domestic trouble: drunken husband that beat her--regular affecting story, you know. These sap-headed fools don't, of course, know THAT. No, sir; she's a remarkable woman! I say, Brimmer, look here!

I"--he hesitated, and then went on more boldly, as if he had formed a sudden resolution. "What have you got to do to-night?"

Brimmer, who had been lost in abstraction, started slightly, and said,--

"I--oh! I've got an appointment with Keene. You know he's off by the steamer--day after to-morrow?"

"What! He's not going off on that wild-goose chase, after all? Why, the man's got Excelsior on the brain!" He stopped as he looked at Brimmer's cold face, and suddenly colored. "I mean his plan--his idea's all nonsense--you know that!"

"I certainly don't agree with him," began Brimmer gravely; "but"--

"The idea," interrupted Markham, encouraged by Brimmer's beginning, "of his knocking around the Gulf of California, and getting up an expedition to go inland, just because a mail-steamer saw a barque like the Excelsior off Mazatlan last August. As if the Excelsior wouldn't have gone into Mazatlan if it had been her! I tell you what it is, Brimmer: it's mighty rough on you and me, and it ain't the square thing at all--after all we've done, and the money we've spent, and the nights we've sat up over the Excelsior--to have this young fellow Keene always putting up the bluff of his lost sister on us! His lost sister, indeed!

as if WE hadn't any feelings."

The two men looked at each other, and each felt it inc.u.mbent to look down and sigh deeply--not hypocritically, but perfunctorily, as over a past grief, although anger had been the dominant expression of the speaker.

"I was about to remark," said Brimmer practically, "that the insurance on the Excelsior having been paid, her loss is a matter of commercial record; and that, in a business point of view, this plan of Keene's ain't worth looking at. As a private matter of our own feelings--purely domestic--there's no question but that we must sympathize with him, although he refuses to let us join in the expenses."

"Oh, as to that," said Markham hurriedly, "I told him to draw on me for a thousand dollars last time I saw him. No, sir; it ain't that. What gets me is this darned nagging and simpering around, and opening old sores, and putting on sentimental style, and doing the bereaved business generally. I reckon he'd be even horrified to see you and me here--though it was just a chance with both of us."

"I think not," said Brimmer dryly. "He knows Miss Montgomery already.

They're going by the same steamer."

Markham looked up quickly.

"Impossible! She's going by the other line to Panama; that is"--he hesitated--"I heard it from the agent."

"She's changed her mind, so Keene says," returned Brimmer. "She's going by way of Nicaragua. He stops at San Juan to reconnoitre the coast up to Mazatlan. Good-night. It's no use waiting here for a cab any longer, I'm off."

"Hold on!" said Markham, struggling out of a sudden uneasy reflection.

"I say, Brimmer," he resumed, with an enforced smile, which he tried to make playful, "your engagement with Keene won't keep you long. What do you say to having a little supper with Miss Montgomery, eh?--perfectly proper, you know--at our hotel? Just a few friends, eh?"

Brimmer's eyes and lips slightly contracted.

"I believe I am already invited," he said quietly. "Keene asked me. In fact, that's the appointment. Strange he didn't speak of you," he added dryly.

"I suppose it's some later arrangement," Markham replied, with feigned carelessness. "Do you know her?"

"Slightly."

"You didn't say so!"

"You didn't ask me," said Brimmer. "She came to consult me about South American affairs. It seems that filibuster General Leonidas, alias Perkins, whose little game we stopped by that Peruvian contract, actually landed in Quinquinambo and established a government. It seems she knows him, has a great admiration for him as a Liberator, as she calls him. I think they correspond!"

"She's a wonderful woman, by jingo, Brimmer! I'd like to hear whom she don't know," said Markham, beaming with a patronizing vanity. "There's you, and there's that filibuster, and old Governor Pico, that she's just s.n.a.t.c.hed bald-headed--I mean, you know, that he recognizes her worth, don't you see? Not like this cattle you see here."

"Are you coming with me?" said Brimmer, gravely b.u.t.toning up his coat, as if encasing himself in a panoply of impervious respectability.

"I'll join you at the hotel," said Markham hurriedly. "There's a man over there in the parquet that I want to say a word to; don't wait for me."

With a slight inclination of the head Mr. Brimmer pa.s.sed out into the lobby, erect, self-possessed, and impeccable. One or two of his commercial colleagues of maturer age, who were loitering leisurely by the wall, unwilling to compromise themselves by actually sitting down, took heart of grace at this correct apparition. Brimmer nodded to them coolly, as if on 'Change, and made his way out of the theatre. He had scarcely taken a few steps before a furious onset of wind and rain drove him into a doorway for shelter. At the same moment a slouching figure, with a turned-up coat-collar, slipped past him and disappeared in a pa.s.sage at his right. Partly hidden by his lowered umbrella, Mr. Brimmer himself escaped notice, but he instantly recognized his late companion, Markham. As he resumed his way up the street he glanced into the pa.s.sage. Halfway down, a light flashed upon the legend "Stage Entrance."

Quincy Brimmer, with a faint smile, pa.s.sed on to his hotel.

It was striking half-past eleven when Mr. Brimmer again issued from his room in the Oriental and pa.s.sed down a long corridor. Pausing a moment before a side hall that opened from it, he cast a rapid look up and down the corridor, and then knocked hastily at a door. It was opened sharply by a lady's maid, who fell back respectfully before Mr. Brimmer's all-correct presence.