"There was a young woman in Venezuela; a pure Castilian, with the blood
of kings in her veins. I could have married her."
"Why didn't you?" she asked sweetly.
"I have wished many times that I had. I wonder if you can understand if
I say that I was afraid?"
"Mr. Kipling says that we can't understand--that we can never
understand. But I think I know what you mean. You may have been
Adam--the first man, again--for her; but she wasn't, and never could
be, Eve--the first woman--for you. Was that it?"
The taxi was finally approaching the quarter of the city in which our
wharf lay. There were other things to be said, and they had to be said
hurriedly.
"Let us get things straightened out--before the crowd messes in," I
said. "Three years ago we were engaged to be married. One day I was
obliged to tell your Aunt Mehitable that the comfortable fortune my
father had left me had been swallowed up in an exhausted Colorado gold
mine, and that I'd have to go to work for a living. She then told
me--with what seemed to me to be unnecessary spitefulness--that her
will was made in favor of some charitable institution, and since you
would thus be left penniless, it was up to me to set you free and give
you a chance to marry somebody who could provide for you. Am I stating
it clearly?"
"Clearly enough."
"Then she went on to say that the news of my misfortune had preceded
me; that you had already been told all there was to tell; and that it
would be a kindness to you if I should agree not to see you again."
"And you did me the kindness," she put in calmly. "I ought to be
thankful for that. Perhaps I am thankful."
"I was furious," I confessed. "If you will permit me to say it this
long after the fact, your aunt carries a vicious tongue in her head,
and she didn't spare me. Also, I'll admit that my own temper isn't
exactly patient or forgiving. It was the next morning that I had the
chance to go to South America thrust at me, and the ship was sailing at
noon. I left a letter for you and disappeared over the horizon."
"Yes," she replied in the same even tone; "I got the letter."
"That brings us down to date," I went on, as the taxi drew up at the
wharf. "The next thing is the _modus vivendi_--the way we must live
for the next few weeks. You say that Jerry knows that we were once
engaged. If he is half a man, there will be plenty of chances for
misunderstanding and trouble. We must agree to be decently quarrelsome."
"You have begun it beautifully," she said, with a hard little
laugh. "Admitting your premises, what will Jerry think of this taxi
drive--without a chaperon?"
"Jerry will never know that you came over with me--unless you tell him."
"Aunt Mehitable can tell him," she retorted, again with the touch of
malice in her voice.
"But, for the sake of Major Terwilliger's money, she won't tell
him," I ventured drily; and a moment later I was handing her up the
_Andromeda's_ accommodation ladder with a sharper misery in my heart
than I had suffered since the night three years in the past when her
dragoness aunt had goaded me into effacing myself.
There was a pleasant bustle of impending departure already going on
aboard the yacht when we reached the deck. Most of the women--all
of them, in fact, save the youngest of the Van Tromp trio and
Annette Grey--had gone to their several staterooms, and the men were
scattered--"dotted" was Conetta's word--here and there, apparently
trying to find themselves, like so many cats in a strange garret.
"You will go below?" I said to Conetta when I had shown her the way aft.
"Yes; and by myself, if you please." Then, with a quick turn of the
proud little head, and a look in the slate-blue eyes that was far
beyond any man's fathoming: "Good-night, Dick, and good-by. Perhaps our
quarrel would better begin right here and now." And with that she was
gone.
It was possibly five minutes later that I met Grey, the newly married,
roving in search of his mate.
"Annette?" he queried. "Have you seen her anywhere, Preble?"
"She is with Edie Van Tromp on the bridge," I told him. Then I linked
an arm in his and drew him to the shoreward rail, saying: "Don't rush
off. Throw that vile cigar away and light a fresh one, and tell me how
the New York law partnership is getting along. Remember, there are some
weeks ahead of you in which you won't be able to get any farther away
from Annette than the length of the _Andromeda_--no matter how badly
you may want to."
The married lover twisted his arm out of mine and dropped the stub of
his cigar over the rail.
"Preble, you're a brute," he remarked, quite conversationally. And then
he added: "By Jove, don't you know, I wouldn't be a bachelor again for
the shiniest million that was ever minted! I didn't realize, until
within the last few weeks, what a crabbed, dog-in-the-manger beggar it
would make of a man."
"Thanks," I laughed. "Experience counts for something, even if it is
short and pretty recent, as you might say. Where is the major?"
Grey clipped the end of the fresh cigar I had given him and lighted it.
He was sparing me a few moments merely to show me that it was possible
for him to stay that long out of sight and sound of the loved one.
"The major is in a class by himself, as you ought to know if you've
preserved any fragment of memory, Preble. He is down in the yacht's
smoking-room, hobnobbing with a glass of hot brandy and soda, and
finishing a novel that he has been reading all the way down from
Chattanooga. Think of it--hot toddy in this weather!"
"A veteran--even a Spanish War Veteran--has to do something to
individualize himself," I jested; and then Grey took his turn at me.
"You are a veteran yourself, Richard--of a sort. They tell me you have
been knocking around here in the tropics so long that you've forgotten
all the little decent and civilized ameliorations. Why don't you marry
and settle down?"