Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories Part 19

"Yes," said Tomaso, in a queer voice. And at the sound Rosa looked up at him sharply; but she could see nothing, for his face was in the shadow.

"And as for you," she said tentatively, "you will get your fortune all the sooner."

"I shall never get it at all," answered Tomaso, with a curt laugh.

"I went down to Palma this morning with my head full of plans--in the sunshine. I came back with an empty brain--in the dark."

He stood motionless, looking down at her. They are slow of tongue in Majorca, and Rosa reflected for quite a minute before she spoke--which is saying a good deal for a woman.

"Tell me," she said at length, gently, "why is it that you will not get your fortune?"

"I went to the notary and told him what had happened, what the merchant had said, and who had heard him--and the notary laughed. 'Where is your paper?' he asked; and, of course, I had no paper. I went to another notary, and at last I saw the Alcalde. 'You should have asked for a paper properly signed,' he said. But no gentleman could have asked for that."

"No," replied Rosa, rather doubtfully.

"I found the driver of the carriage," continued Tomaso, "and took him to the Alcalde, but that was no better. The Alcalde and the notaries laughed at us. Such a story, they said, would make any lawyer laugh."

"But there is Felipe Fortis, who heard it too."

"Yes," answered Tomaso, in a hollow voice, "there is Felipe Fortis. He was in Palma, and I found him at the cafe. But he said he had not time to come to the Alcalde with me then, and he was sure that if he did it would be useless."

"Ah!" said Rosa.

She got up and walked to the edge of the terrace, looking down into the moonlit valley in silence for some minutes. Then she came slowly back, and stood before him looking up into his face. He was head and shoulders above her.

"So your fortune is gone?" she said. And the moonlight shining on her face betrayed the presence of that fleeting wise smile which Tomaso had noticed more than once with wonder.

"Yes--it is gone. And there is an end of it."

"Of what?" asked Rosa.

"Oh!--of everything," replied Tomaso, with a grim stoicism.

Rosa stood looking at him for a moment. Then she took two deliberate steps forward and leant against him just as he was leaning against the trellis, as if he had been a tree or something solid and reliable of that sort. She laid her cheek, of a deeper colour than a sunburnt peach, against his white shirt. In a sort of parenthesis of thought she took a sudden, half-maternal interest in the middle b.u.t.ton of his shirt, tested it, and found it more firmly fixed than she had supposed. Her dusky hair just brushed his chin.

"Then you are nothing but a stupid," she said.

STRANDED

"Aucun chemin de fleurs ne conduit a la gloire."

It was nearly half-past eight when the Grandhaven ran into a fog-bank, and the second officer sent a message to the captain's steward, waiting at that great man's dinner-table in the saloon.

The captain's steward was a discreet man. He gave the message in a whisper as he swept the crumbs from the table with a jerk of his napkin. The second officer could not, of course, reduce speed on his own responsibility. The Grandhaven had been running through fog-banks ever since she left Plymouth in the grey of a November afternoon.

Every Atlantic traveller knows the Grandhaven. She was so well known that every berth was engaged despite the lateness of the season. It was considered a privilege to sail with Captain Dixon, the most popular man on the wide seas. A few millionaires considered themselves honoured by his friendship. One or two of them called him Tom on sh.o.r.e. He was an Englishman, though the Grandhaven was technically an American ship.

His enemies said that he owed his success in life to his manners, which certainly were excellent. Not too familiar with any one at sea, but unerringly discriminating between man and man, between a real position and an imaginary one. For, in the greatest Republic the world has yet seen, men are keenly alive to social distinctions.

On the other hand, his friends pointed to his record. Captain Dixon had never made a mistake in seamanship.

He was a handsome man, with a trim brown beard cut to a point in the naval style, gay blue eyes, and a bluff way of carrying his head. The lady pa.s.sengers invariably fell into the habit of describing him as a splendid man, and the word seemed to fit him like a glove. Nature had certainly designed him to be shown somewhere in the front of life, to be placed upon a dais and looked up to and admired by the mult.i.tude. She had written success upon his sunburnt face.

He had thousands of friends. Every seat at his table was booked two voyages ahead, and he knew the value of popularity. He was never carried off his feet, but enjoyed it simply and heartily. He had fallen in love one summer voyage with a tall and soft-mannered Canadian girl, a Hebe with the face of a Madonna, with thoughtful, waiting blue eyes. She was only nineteen, and, of course, Captain Dixon carried everything before him. The girl was astonished at her good fortune; for this wooer was a king on his own great decks. No princess could be good enough for him, had princesses been in the habit of crossing the Atlantic. Captain Dixon had now been married some years.

His marriage had made a perceptible change in the personnel of his intimates. A bachelor captain appeals to a different world. He was still a great favourite with men.

Although the Grandhaven had only been one night at sea, the captain's table had no vacant seats. These were all old travellers, and there had been libations poured to the G.o.ds, now made manifest by empty bottles and not a little empty laughter. Dixon, however, was steady enough. He had reluctantly accepted one gla.s.s of champagne from the bottle of a Senator powerful in shipping circles. He and his officers made a point of drinking water at table. The modern sailor is one of the startling products of these odd times. He dresses for dinner, and when off duty may be found sitting on the saloon stairs discussing with a lady pa.s.senger the respective merits of Wagner and Chopin as set forth by the ship's band, when he ought to be asleep in bed in preparation for the middle watch.

The captain received the message with a curt nod. But he did not rise from the table. He knew that a hundred eyes were upon him, watching his every glance. If he jumped up and hurried from the table, the night's rest of half a hundred ladies would inevitably suffer.

He took his watch from his pocket and rose, laughing at some sally made by a neighbour. As he pa.s.sed down the length of the saloon, he paused to greet one and exchange a laughing word with another. He was a very gracious monarch.

On deck it was wet and cold. A keen wind from the north-west seemed to promise a heavy sea and a dirty night when the Lizard should be pa.s.sed and the protection of the high Cornish moorlands left behind. The captain's cabin was at the head of the saloon stairs. Captain Dixon lost no time in changing his smart mess-jacket for a thicker coat. Oilskins and a sou'wester transformed him again to the seaman that he was, and he climbed the narrow iron ladder into the howling darkness of the upper bridge with a brisk readiness to meet any situation.

The fog-bank was a thick one. It was like a sheet of wet cotton-wool laid upon the troubled breast of the sea. The lights at the forward end of the huge steamer were barely visible. There was no glare aloft where the masthead light stared unwinking into the mist.

Dixon exchanged a few words with the second officer, who stood, rather restless, by the engine-room telegraph. They spoke in monosyllables. The dial showed "Full speed ahead." Captain Dixon stood chewing the end of his golden moustache, which he had drawn in between his teeth. He looked forward and aft and up aloft in three quick movements of the head. Then he laid his two hands on the engine-room telegraph and reduced the pace to half-speed. There were a hundred people on board who would take note of it with a throb of uneasiness at their hearts, but that could not be helped.

The second officer stepped sideways into the chart-room, reluctant to turn his eyes elsewhere than dead ahead into the wind and mist, to make a note in two books that lay open on the table under the shaded electric lamp. It was twenty minutes to nine.

The Grandhaven was a quick ship, but she was also a safe one. The captain had laid a course close under the Lizard lights. He intended to alter it, but not yet. The mist might lift. There was plenty of time, for by dead reckoning they could scarcely hope to sight the twin lights before eleven o'clock. The captain turned and said a single word to his second officer, and a moment later the great fog-horn above them in the darkness coughed out its deafening note of warning. A dead silence followed. Captain Dixon nodded his head with a curt grunt of satisfaction. There was nothing near them. They could carry on, playing their game of blindman's-buff with Fate, open-eared, steady, watchful.

There was no music to-night, though the band had played the cheeriest items of its repertoire outside the saloon door during dinner. Many of the pa.s.sengers were in their cabins already, for the Grandhaven was rolling gently on the shoulder of the Atlantic swell. The sea was heavy, but not so heavy as they would certainly encounter west of the Land's End. Presently the Grandhaven crept out into a clear s.p.a.ce, leaving the fog-bank in rolling clouds like cannon-smoke behind her.

"Ah!" said Captain Dixon, with a sigh of relief; he had never been really anxious.

The face of the second officer, ruddy and glistening with wet, lighted up suddenly, and sundry lines around his eyes were wiped away as if by the pa.s.sage of a sponge as he stooped over the binnacle. Almost at once his face clouded again.

"There is another light ahead," he muttered. "Hang them."

The captain gave a short laugh to rea.s.sure his subordinate, whom he knew to be an anxious, careful man, on his promotion. Captain Dixon was always self-confident. That gla.s.s of champagne from the Senator's hospitable bottle made him feel doubly capable to-night to take his ship out into the open Atlantic, and then to bed with that easy heart which a skipper only knows on the high seas.

Suddenly he turned to look sharply at his companion, whose eyes were fixed on the fog-bank, which was now looming high above the bows. There were stars above them, but no moon would be up for another three hours.

Dixon seemed to be about to say something, but changed his mind. He raised his hands to the ear-flaps of his sou'wester, and, loosening the string under his chin, pushed the flannel lappets up within the cap. The second officer wore the ordinary seafaring cap known as a cheese-cutter.

He was much too anxious a man to cover his ears even in clear weather, and said, with his nervous laugh, that the colour did not come out of his hair, if any one suggested that the warmer headgear would protect him from rain and spray.

Dixon stood nearer to his companion, and they stood side by side, looking into the fog-bank, which was now upon them.

"Any dogs on board?" he asked casually.

"No--why do you ask?"

"Thought I heard a little bell; such a thing as a lady's lap-dog wears round his neck on a ribbon."

The second officer turned and glanced sharply up at the captain, who, however, made no further comment, and seemed to be thinking of something else.