The Pagan Madonna Part 25

"Then you have some doubts?"

"Only those that beset all of us."

"But somehow--well, you don't seem to belong to this sort of game."

"Why not?"

Unexpectedly he had set a wall between. She had no answer, and her embarra.s.sment was visible on her cheeks.

"Here and there across the world rough men call me Slue-Foot. Perhaps my deformity has reacted upon my soul and twisted that. Perhaps if my countenance had been homely and rugged I would have walked the beaten paths of respectability. But the two together!"

"I'm sorry!"

"A woman such as you are would be. You are a true daughter of the great mother--Pity. But I have never asked pity of any. I have asked only that a man shall keep his word to me as I will keep mine to him."

"But you are risking your liberty, perhaps your life!"

"I've been risking that for more than twenty years. The habit has become normal. All my life I've wanted a real adventure."

She gazed at him in utter astonishment.

"An adventure? Why, you yourself told me that you had risked your life a hundred times!"

"That?"--with a smile and a shrug. "That was business, the day's work. I mean an adventure in which I am accountable to no man."

"Only to G.o.d?"

"Well, of course, if you want it that way. For myself, I'm something of a pagan. I have dreamed of this day. When you were a little girl didn't you dream of a wonderful doll that could walk and make almost human noises?

Well, I'm realizing my doll. I am going pearl hunting in the South Seas--the thing I dreamed of when I was a boy."

"But why commit piracy? Why didn't you hire a steamer?"

"Oh, I must have my joke, too. But I hadn't counted on you. In every campaign there is the hollow road of Ohain. Napoleon lost Waterloo because of it. Your presence here has forced me to use a hand without velvet.

These men expected a little fun--cards and drink; and some of them are grumbling with discontent. But don't worry. In five days we'll be off on our own."

"What is the joke?"

"That will have to wait. For a few minutes I heard you reading to-day.

Your voice is like a bell at sea in the evening. 'Many waters cannot quench love,'" he quoted, the flash of opals in his eyes, though his lips were smiling gently. "The Bible is a wonderful book. Its authors were poets who were not spoiled by the curse of rime. Does it amuse you to hear me talk of the Bible?--an unregenerate scalawag? Well, it is like this: I am something of an authority on illuminated ma.n.u.scripts. I've had to wade through hundreds of them. That is the method by which I became acquainted with the Scriptures. The Song of Songs! Lord love you, if that isn't pure pagan, what is? I prefer the Proverbs. Ask Cleigh if he has that ma.n.u.script with him. It's in a remarkable state of preservation. Remember?

'There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.' Ask Cleigh to show you that."

Cleigh! The name swung her back to the original purpose of this visit.

"Do you know the Cleighs well?"

"I know the father. He has the gift of strong men--unforgetting and unforgiving. I know little or nothing about the son, except that he is a chip of the old block. Queer twist in events, eh?"

"Have you any idea what estranged them?"

"Didn't know they were at outs until the night before we sailed. They don't speak?"

"No. And it seems so utterly foolish!"

"_Cherchez la femme!_"

"You believe that was it?"

"It is always so, always and eternally the woman. I don't mean that she is always to blame; I mean that she is always there--in the background. But you! I say, now, here's the job for you! Bring them together. That's your style. For weeks now you three will be together. Within that time you'll be able to twist both of them round your finger. I wonder if you realize it? You're not beautiful, but you are something better--splendid. Strong men will always be gravitating toward you, wanting comfort, peace. You're not the kind that sets men's hearts on fire, that makes absconders, fills the divorce courts, and all that. You're like a cool hand on a hot forehead. And you have a voice as sweet as a bell."

Instinct--the female fear of the trap--warned Jane to be off, but curiosity held her to the chair. She was human; and this flattery, free of any suggestion of love-making, gave her a warming, pleasurable thrill.

Still there was a fly in the amber. Every woman wishes to be credited with hidden fires, to possess equally the power to d.a.m.n men as well as to save them.

"Has there never been----"

"A woman? Have I not just said there is always a woman?" He was sardonic now. "Mine, seeing me walk, laughed."

"She wasn't worth it!"

"No, she wasn't. But when we are twenty the heart is blind. So Cleigh and the boy don't speak?"

"Cleigh hasn't injured you in any way, has he?"

"Injured me? Of course not! I am only forced by circ.u.mstance--and an oblique sense of the comic--to make a convenience of him. And by the Lord Harry, it's up to you to help me out!"

"I?"--bewildered.

CHAPTER XIV

Jane gazed through the doorway at the sea. There was apparently no horizon, no telling where the sea ended and the faded blue of the sky began. There was something about this sea she did not like. She was North-born. It seemed to her that there was really less to fear from the Atlantic fury than from these oily, ingratiating, rolling mounds. They were the Uriah Heep of waters. She knew how terrible they could be, far more terrible than the fiercest nor'easter down the Atlantic. Typhoon! How could a yacht live through a hurricane? She turned again toward Cunningham.

"You are like that," she said, irrelevantly.

"Like what?"

"Like the sea."

Cunningham rose and peered under the half-drawn blind.

"That may be complimentary, but hanged if I know! Smooth?--is that what you mean?"

"Kind of terrible."

He sat down again.

"That rather cuts. I might be terrible. I don't know--never met the occasion; but I do know that I'm not treacherous. You certainly are not afraid of me."