DARK TIDINGS
The news I bring is heavy in my tongue.—Shakespeare.
The second day thereafter Shirley Claiborne went into a jeweler’s on the
Grand Quai to purchase a trinket that had caught her eye, while she
waited for Dick, who had gone off in their carriage to the post-office to
send some telegrams. It was a small shop, and the time early afternoon,
when few people were about. A man who had preceded her was looking at
watches, and seemed deeply absorbed in this occupation. She heard his
inquiries as to quality and price, and knew that it was Armitage’s voice
before she recognized his tall figure. She made her purchase quickly, and
was about to leave the shop, when he turned toward her and she bowed.
“Good afternoon, Miss Claiborne. These are very tempting bazaars, aren’t
they? If the abominable tariff laws of America did not give us pause—”
He bent above her, hat in hand, smiling. He had concluded the purchase of
a watch, which the shopkeeper was now wrapping in a box.
“I have just purchased a little remembrance for my ranch foreman out in
Montana, and before I can place it in his hands it must be examined and
appraised and all the pleasure of the gift destroyed by the custom
officers in New York. I hope you are a good smuggler, Miss Claiborne.”
“I’d like to be. Women are supposed to have a knack at the business; but
my father is so patriotic that he makes me declare everything.”
“Patriotism will carry one far; but I object both to being taxed and to
the alternative of corrupting the gentlemen who lie in wait at the
receipt of customs.”
“Of course the answer is that Americans should buy at home,” replied
Shirley. She received her change, and Armitage placed his small package
in his pocket.
“My brother expected to meet me here; he ran off with our carriage,”
Shirley explained.
“These last errands are always trying—there are innumerable things one
would like to come back for from mid-ocean, tariff or no tariff.”
“There’s the wireless,” said Shirley. “In time we shall be able to commit
our afterthoughts to it. But lost views can hardly be managed that way.
After I get home I shall think of scores of things I should like to see
again—that photographs don’t give.”
“Such as—?”
“Oh—the way the Pope looks when he gives his blessing at St. Peter’s;
and the feeling you have when you stand by Napoleon’s tomb—the awfulness
of what he did and was—and being here in Switzerland, where I always
feel somehow the pressure of all the past of Europe about me. Now,”—and
she laughed lightly,—“I have made a most serious confession.”
“It is a new idea—that of surveying the ages from these mountains. They
must be very wise after all these years, and they have certainly seen men
and nations do many evil and wretched things. But the history of the
world is all one long romance—a tremendous story.”
“That is what makes me sorry to go home,” said Shirley meditatively. “We
are so new—still in the making, and absurdly raw. When we have a war, it
is just politics, with scandals about what the soldiers have to eat, and
that sort of thing; and there’s a fuss about pensions, and the heroic
side of it is lost.”
“But it is easy to overestimate the weight of history and tradition. The
glory of dead Caesar doesn’t do the peasant any good. When you see
Italian laborers at work in America digging ditches or laying railroad
ties, or find Norwegian farmers driving their plows into the new hard
soil of the Dakotas, you don’t think of their past as much as of their
future—the future of the whole human race.”
Armitage had been the subject of so much jesting between Dick and herself
that it seemed strange to be talking to him. His face brightened
pleasantly when he spoke; his eyes were grayer than she had mockingly
described them for her brother’s benefit the day before. His manner was
gravely courteous, and she did not at all believe that he had followed
her about.
Her ideals of men were colored by the American prejudice in favor of
those who aim high and venture much. In her childhood she had read Malory
and Froissart with a boy’s delight. She possessed, too, that poetic sense
of the charm of “the spirit of place” that is the natural accompaniment
of the imaginative temperament. The cry of bugles sometimes brought tears
to her eyes; her breath came quickly when she sat—as she often did—in
the Fort Myer drill hall at Washington and watched the alert cavalrymen
dashing toward the spectators’ gallery in the mimic charge. The work that
brave men do she admired above anything else in the world. As a child in
Washington she had looked wonderingly upon the statues of heroes and the
frequent military pageants of the capital; and she had wept at the solemn
pomp of military funerals. Once on a battleship she had thrilled at the
salutes of a mighty fleet in the Hudson below the tomb of Grant; and soon
thereafter had felt awe possess her as she gazed upon the white marble
effigy of Lee in the chapel at Lexington; for the contemplation of heroes
was dear to her, and she was proud to believe that her father, a veteran
of the Civil War, and her soldier brother were a tie between herself and
the old heroic times.
Armitage was aware that a jeweler’s shop was hardly the place for
extended conversation with a young woman whom he scarcely knew, but he
lingered in the joy of hearing this American girl’s voice, and what she
said interested him immensely. He had seen her first in Paris a few
months before at an exhibition of battle paintings. He had come upon her
standing quite alone before _High Tide at Gettysburg_, the picture of the
year; and he had noted the quick mounting of color to her cheeks as the
splendid movement of the painting—its ardor and fire—took hold of her.
He saw her again in Florence; and it was from there that he had
deliberately followed the Claibornes.
His own plans were now quite unsettled by his interview with Von
Stroebel. He fully expected Chauvenet in Geneva; the man had apparently
been on cordial terms with the Claibornes; and as he had seemed to be
master of his own time, it was wholly possible that he would appear
before the Claibornes left Geneva. It was now the second day after Von
Stroebel’s departure, and Armitage began to feel uneasy.
He stood with Shirley quite near the shop door, watching for Captain
Claiborne to come back with the carriage.
“But America—isn’t America the most marvelous product of romance in the
world,—its discovery,—the successive conflicts that led up to the
realization of democracy? Consider the worthless idlers of the Middle
Ages going about banging one another’s armor with battle-axes. Let us
have peace, said the tired warrior.”
“He could afford to say it; he was the victor,” said Shirley.
“Ah! there is Captain Claiborne. I am indebted to you, Miss Claiborne,
for many pleasant suggestions.”
The carriage was at the door, and Dick Claiborne came up to them at once
and bowed to Armitage.
“There is great news: Count Ferdinand von Stroebel was murdered in his
railway carriage between here and Vienna; they found him dead at
Innsbruck this morning.”
“Is it possible! Are you quite sure he was murdered?”
It was Armitage who asked the question. He spoke in a tone quite
matter-of-fact and colorless, so that Shirley looked at him in surprise;
but she saw that he was very grave; and then instantly some sudden
feeling flashed in his eyes.
“There is no doubt of it. It was an atrocious crime; the count was an old
man and feeble when we saw him the other day. He wasn’t fair game for an
assassin,” said Claiborne.
“No; he deserved a better fate,” remarked Armitage.
“He was a grand old man,” said Shirley, as they left the shop and walked
toward the carriage. “Father admired him greatly; and he was very kind to
us in Vienna. It is terrible to think of his being murdered.”
“Yes; he was a wise and useful man,” observed Armitage, still grave. “He
was one of the great men of his time.”
His tone was not that of one who discusses casually a bit of news of the
hour, and Captain Claiborne paused a moment at the carriage door, curious
as to what Armitage might say further.
“And now we shall see—” began the young American.
“We shall see Johann Wilhelm die of old age within a few years at most;
and then Charles Louis, his son, will be the Emperor-king in his place;
and if he should go hence without heirs, his cousin Francis would rule in
the house of his fathers; and Francis is corrupt and worthless, and quite
necessary to the plans of destiny for the divine order of kings.”
John Armitage stood beside the carriage quite erect, his hat and stick
and gloves in his right hand, his left thrust lightly into the side
pocket of his coat.
“A queer devil,” observed Claiborne, as they drove away. “A solemn
customer, and not cheerful enough to make a good drummer. By what
singular chance did he find you in that shop?”
“I found _him_, dearest brother, if I must make the humiliating
disclosure.”
“I shouldn’t have believed it! I hardly thought you would carry it so
far.”
“And while he may be a salesman of imitation cut-glass, he has expensive
tastes.”
“Lord help us, he hasn’t been buying you a watch?”
“No; he was lavishing himself on a watch for the foreman of his ranch in
Montana.”
“Humph! you’re chaffing.”
“Not in the least. He paid—I couldn’t help being a witness to the
transaction—he actually paid five hundred francs for a watch to give to
the foreman of his ranch—_his_ ranch, mind you, in Montana, U.S.A.
He spoke of it incidentally, as though he were always buying watches for
cowboys. Now where does that leave us?”
“I’m afraid it rather does for my theory. I’ll look him up when I get
home. Montana isn’t a good hiding-place any more. But it was odd the way
he acted about old Stroebel’s death. You don’t suppose he knew him,
do you?”
“It’s possible. Poor Count von Stroebel! Many hearts are lighter, now
that he’s done for.”
“Yes; and there will be something doing in Austria, now that he’s out of
the way.”
Four days passed, in which they devoted themselves to their young
brother. The papers were filled with accounts of Count von Stroebel’s
death and speculations as to its effect on the future of Austria and the
peace of Europe. The Claibornes saw nothing of Armitage. Dick asked for
him in the hotel, and found that he had gone, but would return in a few
days.
It was on the morning of the fourth day that Armitage appeared suddenly
at the hotel as Dick and his sister waited for a carriage to carry them
to their train. He had just returned, and they met by the narrowest
margin. He walked with them to the door of the Monte Rosa.
“We are running for the _King Edward_, and hope for a day in London
before we sail. Perhaps we shall see you one of these days in America,”
said Claiborne, with some malice, it must be confessed, for his sister’s
benefit.
“That is possible; I am very fond of Washington,” responded Armitage
carelessly.
“Of course you will look us up,” persisted Dick. “I shall be at Fort Myer
for a while—and it will always be a pleasure—”
Claiborne turned for a last word with the porter about their baggage, and
Armitage stood talking to Shirley, who had already entered the carriage.
“Oh, is there any news of Count von Stroebel’s assassin?” she asked,
noting the newspaper that Armitage held in his hand.
“Nothing. It’s a very mysterious and puzzling affair.”
“It’s horrible to think such a thing possible—he was a wonderful old
man. But very likely they will find the murderer.”
“Yes; undoubtedly.”
Then, seeing her brother beating his hands together impatiently behind
Armitage’s back—a back whose ample shoulders were splendidly silhouetted
in the carriage door—Shirley smiled in her joy of the situation, and
would have prolonged it for her brother’s benefit even to the point of
missing the train, if the matter had been left wholly in her hands. It
amused her to keep the conversation pitched in the most impersonal key.
“The secret police will scour Europe in pursuit of the assassin,” she
observed.
“Yes,” replied Armitage gravely.
He thought her brown traveling gown, with hat and gloves to match,
exceedingly becoming, and he liked the full, deep tones of her voice,
and the changing light of her eyes; and a certain dimple in her left
cheek—he had assured himself that it had no counterpart on the
right—made the fate of principalities and powers seem, at the moment, an
idle thing.
“The truth will be known before we sail, no doubt,” said Shirley. “The
assassin may be here in Geneva by this time.”
“That is quite likely,” said John Armitage, with unbroken gravity. “In
fact, I rather expect him here, or I should be leaving to-day myself.”
He bowed and made way for the vexed and chafing Claiborne, who gave his
hand to Armitage hastily and jumped into the carriage.
“Your imitation cut-glass drummer has nearly caused us to miss our train.
Thank the Lord, we’ve seen the last of that fellow.”
Shirley said nothing, but gazed out of the window with a wondering look
in her eyes. And on the way to Liverpool she thought often of Armitage’s
last words. “I rather expect him here, or I should be leaving to-day
myself,” he had said.
She was not sure whether, if it had not been for those words, she would
have thought of him again at all. She remembered him as he stood framed
in the carriage door—his gravity, his fine ease, the impression he gave
of great physical strength, and of resources of character and courage.
And so Shirley Claiborne left Geneva, not knowing the curious web that
fate had woven for her, nor how those last words spoken by Armitage at
the carriage door were to link her to strange adventures at the very
threshold of her American home.