The Port of Missing Men Part 10

Discoverers benefit mankind at great sacrifice and expense, and die before they can receive the royal thanks. A pirate's business is all done over the counter on a strictly cash basis."

They were silent for a moment, continuing their tramp. Pair weather was peopling the decks. d.i.c.k Claiborne was engrossed with a vivacious California girl, and Shirley saw him only at meals; but he and Armitage held night sessions in the smoking-room, with increased liking on both sides.

"Armitage isn't a bad sort," d.i.c.k admitted to Shirley. "He's either an awful liar, or he's seen a lot of the world."

"Of course, he has to travel to sell his gla.s.sware," observed Shirley.

"I'm surprised at your seeming intimacy with a mere 'peddler,'--and you an officer in the finest cavalry in the world."

"Well, if he's a peddler he's a high-cla.s.s one--probably the junior member of the firm that owns the works."

Armitage saw something of all the Claibornes every day in the pleasant intimacy of ship life, and Hilton Claiborne found the young man an interesting talker. Judge Claiborne is, as every one knows, the best-posted American of his time in diplomatic history; and when they were together Armitage suggested topics that were well calculated to awaken the old lawyer's interest.

"The gla.s.s-blower's a deep one, all right," remarked d.i.c.k to Shirley. "He jollies me occasionally, just to show there's no hard feeling; then he jollies the governor; and when I saw our mother footing it on his arm this afternoon I almost fell in a faint. I wish you'd hold on to him tight till we're docked. My little friend from California is crazy about him--and I haven't dared tell her he's only a drummer; such a fling would be unchivalrous of me--"

"It would, Richard. Be a generous foe--whether--whether you can afford to be or not!"

"My sister--my own sister says this to me! This is quite the unkindest.

I'm going to offer myself to the daughter of the redwoods at once."

Shirley and Armitage talked--as people will on ship-board--of everything under the sun. Shirley's enthusiasms were in themselves interesting; but she was informed in the world's larger affairs, as became the daughter of a man who was an authority in such matters, and found it pleasant to discuss them with Armitage. He felt the poetic quality in her; it was that which had first appealed to him; but he did not know that something of the same sort in himself touched her; it was enough for those days that he was courteous and amusing, and gained a trifle in her eyes from the fact that he had no tangible background.

Then came the evening of the fifth day. They were taking a turn after dinner on the lighted deck. The spring stars hung faint and far through thin clouds and the wind was keen from the sea. A few pa.s.sengers were out; the deck stewards went about gathering up rugs and chairs for the night.

"Time oughtn't to be reckoned at all at sea, so that people who feel themselves getting old might sail forth into the deep and defy the old man with the hour-gla.s.s."

"I like the idea. Such people could become fishers--permanently, and grow very wise from so much brain food."

"They wouldn't eat, Mr. Armitage. Brain-food forsooth! You talk like a breakfast-food advertis.e.m.e.nt. My idea--mine, please note--is for such fortunate people to sail in pretty little boats with orange-tinted sails and pick up lost dreams. I got a hint of that in a pretty poem once--

"'Time seemed to pause a little pace, I heard a dream go by.'"

"But out here in mid-ocean a little boat with lateen sails wouldn't have much show. And dreams pa.s.sing over--the idea is pretty, and is creditable to your imagination. But I thought your fancy was more militant. Now, for example, you like battle pictures--" he said, and paused inquiringly.

She looked at him quickly.

"How do you know I do?"

"You like Detaille particularly."

"Am I to defend my taste?--what's the answer, if you don't mind?"

"Detaille is much to my liking, also; but I prefer Flameng, as a strictly personal matter. That was a wonderful collection of military and battle pictures shown in Paris last winter."

She half withdrew her hand from his arm, and turned away. The sea winds did not wholly account for the sudden color in her cheeks. She had seen Armitage in Paris--in cafes, at the opera, but not at the great exhibition of world-famous battle pictures; yet undoubtedly he had seen her; and she remembered with instant consciousness the hours of absorption she had spent before those canvases.

"It was a public exhibition, I believe; there was no great harm in seeing it."

"No; there certainly was not!" He laughed, then was serious at once.

Shirley's tense, arrested figure, her bright, eager eyes, her parted lips, as he saw her before the battle pictures in the gallery at Paris, came up before him and gave him pause. He could not play upon that stolen glance or tease her curiosity in respect to it. If this were a ship flirtation, it might be well enough; but the very sweetness and open-heartedness of her youth shielded her. It seemed to him in that moment a contemptible and unpardonable thing that he had followed her about--and caught her, there at Paris, in an exalted mood, to which she had been wrought by the moving incidents of war.

"I was in Paris during the exhibition," he said quietly. "Ormsby, the American painter--the man who did the _High Tide at Gettysburg_--is an acquaintance of mine."

"Oh!"

It was Ormsby's painting that had particularly captivated Shirley. She had returned to it day after day; and the thought that Armitage had taken advantage of her deep interest in Pickett's charging gray line was annoying, and she abruptly changed the subject.

Shirley had speculated much as to the meaning of Armitage's remark at the carriage door in Geneva--that he expected the slayer of the old Austrian prime minister to pa.s.s that way. Armitage had not referred to the crime in any way in his talks with her on the _King Edward_; their conversations had been pitched usually in a light and frivolous key, or if one were disposed to be serious the other responded in a note of levity.

"We're all imperialists at heart," said Shirley, referring to a talk between them earlier in the day. "We Americans are hungry for empire; we're simply waiting for the man on horseback to gallop down Broadway and up Fifth Avenue with a troop of cavalry at his heels and proclaim the new dispensation."

"And before he'd gone a block a big Irish policeman would arrest him for disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, or for giving a show without a license, and the republic would continue to do business at the old stand."

"No; the police would have been bribed in advance, and would deliver the keys of the city to the new emperor at the door of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and his majesty would go to Sherry's for luncheon, and sign a few decrees, and order the guillotine set up in Union Square. Do you follow me, Mr. Armitage?"

"Yes; to the very steps of the guillotine, Miss Claiborne. But the looting of the temples and the plundering of banks--if the thing is bound to be--I should like to share in the general joy. But I have an idea, Miss Claiborne," he exclaimed, as though with inspiration.

"Yes--you have an idea--"

"Let me be the man on horseback; and you might be--"

"Yes--the suspense is terrible!--what might I be, your Majesty?"

"Well, we should call you--"

He hesitated, and she wondered whether he would be bold enough to meet the issue offered by this turn of their nonsense.

"I seem to give your Majesty difficulty; the silence isn't flattering,"

she said mockingly; but she was conscious of a certain excitement as she walked the deck beside him.

"Oh, pardon me! The difficulty is only as to t.i.tle--you would, of course, occupy the dais; but whether you should be queen or empress--that's the rub! If America is to be an empire, then of course you would be an empress. So there you are answered."

They pa.s.sed laughingly on to the other phases of the matter in the whimsical vein that was natural in her, and to which he responded. They watched the lights of an east-bound steamer that was pa.s.sing near. The exchange of rocket signals--that pretty and graceful parley between ships that pa.s.s in the night--interested them for a moment. Then the deck lights went out so suddenly it seemed that a dark curtain had descended and shut them in with the sea.

"Accident to the dynamo--we shall have the lights on in a moment!"

shouted the deck officer, who stood near, talking to a pa.s.senger.

"Shall we go in?" asked Armitage.

"Yes, it is getting cold," replied Shirley.

For a moment they were quite alone on the dark deck, though they heard voices near at hand.

They were groping their way toward the main saloon, where they had left Mr. and Mrs. Claiborne, when Shirley was aware of some one lurking near.

A figure seemed to be crouching close by, and she felt its furtive movements and knew that it had pa.s.sed but remained a few feet away. Her hand on Armitage's arm tightened.

"What is that?--there is some one following us," she said.

At the same moment Armitage, too, became aware of the presence of a stooping figure behind him. He stopped abruptly and faced about.