The Pagan Madonna Part 24

"Fifteenth century--the vellum. The Florentine covers were probably added in the seventeenth. I have four more downstairs. They are museum pieces, as we say."

"That is to say, priceless?"

"After a fashion."

"'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned!'"

"Why did you select that?"

"I didn't select it; I remembered it--because it is true."

"You have a very pleasant voice. Go on--read."

Thus for an hour she read to him, and by the time she grew tired Cleigh was sound asleep. The look of granite was gone from his face, and she saw that he, too, had been handsome in his youth. Why had he struck Denny on the mouth? What had the son done so to enrage the father? Some woman! And where had she met the man? Oh, she was certain that she had encountered him before! But for the present the gate to recollection refused to swing outward. Gently she laid the beautiful book on his knees and stole over to the rail. For a while she watched the flying fish.

Then came one of those impulses which keep human beings from becoming half G.o.ds--a wrong impulse, surrendered to immediately, unweighed, una.n.a.lyzed, unchallenged. The father asleep, the son amusing himself with the phonograph, she was now un.o.bserved by her guardians; and so she put into execution the thought that had been urging and intriguing her since the strange voyage began--a visit to the chart house. She wanted to ask Cunningham some questions. He would know something about the Cleighs.

The port door to the chart house was open, latched back against the side.

She hesitated for a moment outside the high-beamed threshold--hesitated because Captain Newton was not visible. The wheelman was alone. Obliquely she saw Cunningham, Cleve, and a third man seated round a table which was littered. This third man sat facing the port door, and sensing her presence he looked up. Rather attractive until one noted the thin, hard lips, the brilliant blue eyes. At the sight of Jane something flitted over his face, and Jane knew that he was bad.

"What's the matter, Flint?" asked Cunningham, observing the other's abstraction.

"We have a visitor," answered Flint.

Cunningham spun his chair round and jumped to his feet.

"Miss Norman? Come in, come in! Anything you need?" he asked with lively interest.

"I should like to ask you some questions, Mr. Cunningham."

"Oh! Well, if I can answer them, I will."

He looked significantly at his companions, who rose and left the house by the starboard door.

"They can't keep away from him, can they?" said Flint, cynically.

"Slue-Foot has the come-hither, sure enough. I had an idea she'd be hiking this way the first chance she got."

"You haven't the right dope this trip," replied Cleve. "The contract reads: Hands off women and booze."

"Psalm-singing pirates! We'll be having prayers Sunday. But that woman is my style."

"Better begin digging up a prayer if you've got that bug in your head. If you make any fool play in that direction Cunningham will break you. I saw you last night staring through the transom. Watch your step, Flint. I'm telling you."

"But if she should happen to take a fancy to me, who shall say no?"

"Hate yourself, eh? There was liquor on your breath last night. Did you bring some aboard?"

"What's that to you?"

"It's a whole lot to me, my bucko--to me and to the rest of the boys.

Cleigh will not prosecute us for piracy if we play a decent game until we raise the Catwick. On old Van Dorn's tub we can drink and sing if we want to. If Cunningham gets a whiff of your breath, when you've had it, you'll get yours. Most of the boys have never done anything worse than apple stealing. It was the adventure. All keyed up for war and no place to go, and this was a kind of safety valve. Already half of them are beginning to knock in the knees. Game, understand, but now worried about the future."

"A peg or two before turning in won't hurt anybody. I'm not touching it in the daytime."

"Keep away from him when you do--that's all. We're depending on you and Cunningham to pull through. If you two get to sc.r.a.pping the whole business will go blooey. If we play the game according to contract there's a big chance of getting back to the States without having the sheriff on the dock to meet us. But if you mess it up because an unexpected stroke put a woman on board, you'll end up as shark bait."

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't," was the truculent rejoinder.

"Lord!" said Cleve, a vast discouragement in his tone. "You lay a course as true and fine as a hair, and run afoul a rotting derelict in the night!"

Flint laughed.

"Oh, I shan't make any trouble. I'll say my prayers regular until we make sh.o.r.e finally. The agreement was to lay off the Cleigh booze. I brought on board only a couple of quarts, and they'll be gone before we raise the Catwick. But if I feel like talking to the woman I'll do it."

"It's your funeral, not mine," was the ominous comment. "You've been on the beach once too often, Flint, to play a game like this straight. But Cunningham had to have you, because you know the Malay lingo. Remember, he isn't afraid of anything that walks on two feet or four."

"Neither am I--when I want anything. But gla.s.s beads!"

"That was only a lure for Cleigh, who'd go round the world for any curio he was interested in."

"That's what I mean. If it were diamonds or pearls or rubies, all well and good. But a string of gla.s.s beads! The old duffer is a nut!"

"Maybe he is. But if you had ten or twelve millions, what would you do?"

"Jump for Prome and foot it to the silk bazaar, where there are three or four of the prettiest Burmese girls you ever laid your eyes on. Then I'd buy the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo and close it to the public."

"And in five years--the old beach again!"

Flint scowled at the oily, heaving rolls, bra.s.sy and dazzling. He was bored. For twelve weeks he had circled the dull round of ship routine, with never sh.o.r.e leave that was long enough for an ordinary drinking bout.

He was bored stiff. Suddenly his thin lips broke into a smile. Cleve, noting the smile, divined something of the impellent thought behind that smile, and he grew uneasy. He recalled his own expression of a few moments gone--the unreckoned derelict.

"Thank you for coming up," said Cunningham. "It makes me feel that you trust me."

"I want to," admitted Jane.

A disturbing phenomenon. Always there was a quickening of her heart-beats at the beginning of each encounter with this unusual gentleman rover. It was no longer fear. What was it? Was it the face of him, too strong and vital for a woman's, too handsome for a man's? Was it his dark, fiery eye which was always reversing what his glib tongue said? Some hidden magnetism? Alone, the thought of him was recurrent, no matter how resolutely she cast it forth. Even now she could not honestly say whether she was here to ask questions of Cunningham or of herself. Perhaps it was because he was the unknown, whereas Denny was for the most part as readable as an open book. The one like the forest stream, sometimes turbulent but always clear; the other like the sea through which they plowed, smooth, secret, ominous.

"Do your guardians know where you are?"--raillery in his voice.

"No. I came to ask some questions."

"Curiosity. Sit down. What is it you wish to know?"

"All this--and what will be the end?"

"Well, doubtless there will be an end, but I'm not seer enough to foretell it."