BEAUTY IN DISTRESS
"Can you tell me where I can get some ice? Can you sell me some ice?"
cried the lady excitedly, when she was still some yards distant from
Cleggett.
"Ice?" The request was so unusual that Cleggett was not certain that
he had understood.
"Yes, ice! Ice!" There was no mistaking the genuine character of her
eagerness; if she had been begging for her life she could not have been
more in earnest. "Don't tell me that you have none on your boat.
Don't tell me that! Don't tell me that!"
And suddenly, like a woman who has borne all that she can bear, she
burst undisguisedly into a paroxysm of weeping. Cleggett, stirred by
her beauty and her trouble, stepped nearer to her, for she swayed with
her emotion as if she were about to fall. Impulsively she put a hand on
his arm, and the Pomeranian, dropped unceremoniously to the ground,
sprang at Cleggett snarling and snapping as if sure he were the author
of the lady's misfortunes.
"You will think I am mad," said the lady, endeavoring to control her
tears, "but I MUST have ice. Don't tell me that you have no ice!"
"My dear lady," said Cleggett, unconsciously clasping, in his anxiety
to reassure her, the hand that she had laid upon his arm, "I have
ice--you shall have all the ice you want!"
"Oh," she murmured, leaning towards him, "you cannot know----"
But the rest was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep sigh she
fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The reaction from despair had been too
much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of
reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted.
High-strung natures, intrepid in the face of danger, are apt to such
collapses in the moment of deliverance; and, whatever the nature of the
lady's trouble, Cleggett gained from her swoon a sharp sense of its
intensity.
Cleggett was not used to having beautiful women faint and fall into his
arms, and he was too much of a gentleman to hold one there a single
moment longer than was absolutely necessary. He turned his head rather
helplessly towards the vehicle in which the lady had arrived. To his
consternation and surprise it had turned around and the chauffeur was
in the act of starting back towards Fairport. But he had left behind
him a large zinc bucket with a cover on it, a long unpainted, oblong
box, and two steamer trunks; on the oblong box sat a short, squat young
man in an attitude of deep dejection.
"Hi there! Stop!" cried Cleggett to the chauffeur. That person
stopped his machine. He did more. He arose in the seat, applied his
thumb to his nose, and vigorously and vivaciously waggled his outspread
fingers at Cleggett in a gesture, derisive and inelegant, that is older
than the pyramids. Then he started his machine again and made all
speed in the direction of Fairport.
"I say, you, come here!" Cleggett called to the squat young man. "Can't
you see that the lady's fainted?"
The squat young man, thus exhorted, sadly approached.
"Can't you see the lady has fainted?" repeated Cleggett.
"Skoits often does," said the squat young man, looking over the
situation in a detached, judicial manner. He spoke out of the left
corner of his mouth in a hoarse voice, without moving the right side of
his face at all, and he seemed to feel that the responsibility of the
situation was Cleggett's.
"But, don't you know her? Didn't you come here with her?"
The squat young man appeared to debate some moral issue inwardly for a
moment. And then, speaking this time out of the right corner of his
mouth, which was now nearer Cleggett, without disturbing the left half
of his face, he pointed towards the oblong box and murmured huskily:
"That's my job." He went and sat down on the box again.
Without more ado Cleggett lifted the lady and bore her onto the Jasper
B. She was a heavy burden, but Cleggett declined the assistance of
Cap'n Abernethy and George the Greek, who had come tardily out of the
forecastle and now offered their assistance.
"Get a bottle of wine," he told Yosh, as he passed the Japanese on the
deck, "and then make some tea."
Cleggett laid the lady on a couch in the cabin, and then lighted a
lamp, as it got dark early in these quarters. While he waited for
Yoshahira Kuroki and the wine, he looked at her. In her appealing
helplessness she looked even more beautiful than she had at first. She
was a blonde, with eyebrows and lashes darker than her hair; and, even
in her swoon, Cleggett could see that she was of the thin-skinned,
high-colored type. Her eyes, as he had seen before she swooned, were
of a deep, dark violet color. She was no chit of a girl, but a mature
woman, tall and splendid in the noble fullness of her contours. The
high nose spoke of love of activity and energy of character. The full
mouth indicated warmth of heart; the chin was of that sort which we
have been taught to associate with determination.
The Japanese brought the wine, and Cleggett poured a few spoonfuls down
the lady's throat. Presently she sighed and stirred and began to show
signs of returning animation.
The Pomeranian, which had followed them into the cabin, and which now
lay whimpering at her feet, also seemed to feel that she was awakening,
and, crawling higher, began to lick one of her hands.
"Make some tea, Yosh," said Cleggett. "What is it?"
This last was addressed to the lady herself. Her eyes had opened for a
fleeting instant as Cleggett spoke to the Japanese, and her lips had
moved. Cleggett bent his head nearer, while Yosh picked up the dog,
which violently objected, and asked again: "What is it?"
"Orange pekoe, please," the lady murmured, dreamily.
And then she sat up with a start, struggled to recover herself, and
looked about her wildly.
"Where am I?" she cried. "What has happened?" She passed her hand
across her brow, frowning.
"You fainted, madam," said Cleggett.
"Oh!" Suddenly recollection came to her, and her anxieties rushed upon
her once more. "The ice! The ice!" She sprang to her feet, and
grasped Cleggett by both shoulders, searching his face with eager eyes.
"You did not lie to me, did you? You promised me ice! Where is the
ice?"
"You shall have the ice," said Cleggett, "at once."
"Thank God!" she said. And then: "Where are Elmer and the box?"
"Elmer? Oh, the short man! On shore. I believe that he and your
chauffeur had some sort of an altercation, for the chauffeur went off
and left him."
"Yes," she said, simply, as they passed up the companionway to the deck
together, "that man, the driver, refused to bring us any farther."
Cleggett must have looked a little blank at that, for she suddenly
threw back her head and laughed at him. And then, sobering instantly,
she called to the squat young man:
"Elmer! Oh, Elmer! You may bring the boxes on board!" She turned to
Cleggett: "He may, mayn't he? Thank you--I was sure you would say he
might. And if one of your men could just give him a lift? And--the
ice?"
"George," called Cleggett, "help the man get the boxes aboard. Kuroki,
bring fifty pounds of ice on deck."
She sighed as she heard him give these orders, but it was a sigh of
satisfaction, and she smiled at Cleggett as she signed. Sometimes a
great deal can happen in a very short space of time. Ten minutes
before, Cleggett had never seen this lady, and now he was giving orders
at her merest suggestion. But in those ten minutes he had seen her
weep, he had seen her faint, he had seen her recover herself; he had
seen her emerge from the depths of despair into something more like
self-control; he had carried her in his arms, she had laughed at him,
she had twice impulsively grasped him by the arm, she had smiled at him
three times, she had sighed twice, she had frowned once; she had swept
upon him bringing with her an impression of the mysterious. Many men
are married to women for years without seeing their wives display so
many and such varied phases; to Cleggett it seemed not so much that he
was making a new acquaintance as renewing one that had been broken off
suddenly at some distant date. Cleggett, like the true-hearted
gentleman and born romanticist that he was, resolved to serve her
without question until such time as she chose to make known to him her
motives for her actions.
"Do you know," she said, softly and gravely to Cleggett as George and
Elmer deposited the oblong box upon a spot which she indicated near the
cabin, "I have met very few men in my life who are capable of what you
are doing?"
"I?" said Cleggett, surprised. "I have done nothing."
"You have found a woman in a strange position--an unusual position,
indeed!--and you have helped her without persecuting her with
questions."
"It is nothing," murmured Cleggett.
"Would you think me too impulsive," she said, with a rare smile, "if I
told you that you are the sort of man whom women are ready to trust
implicitly almost at first sight?"
Cleggett did not permit himself to speak for fear that the thrill which
her words imparted to him would carry him too far. He bowed.
"But I think you mentioned tea?" she said. "Did I hear you say it was
orange pekoe, or did I dream that? And couldn't we have it on deck?"
While Kuroki was bringing a table and chairs on deck and busying
himself about that preparation of tea, Cleggett watched Elmer, the
squat young man, with a growing curiosity. George and Cap'n Abernethy
were also watching Elmer from a discreet distance. Even Kuroki, silent,
swift, and well-trained Kuroki, could not but steal occasional glances
at Elmer. Had Cleggett been of a less lofty and controlled spirit he
would certainly have asked questions.
For Elmer, having uncovered the zinc can and taken from it a hammer and
a large tin funnel, proceeded to break the big chunk of ice which
Kuroki had brought him, into half a dozen smaller pieces. These
smaller lumps, with the exception of two, he put into the zinc bucket,
wrapped around with pieces of coffee sacking. Then he put the cover on
the bucket to exclude the air.
The zinc bucket was thus a portable refrigerator, or rather, ice house.
Taking one of the lumps of ice which he had left out of the zinc bucket
for immediate use, Elmer carefully and methodically broke it into still
smaller pieces--pieces about the size of an English walnut, but
irregular in shape. Then he inserted the tin funnel into a small hole
in the uppermost surface of the unpainted, oblong box and dropped in
twenty or more of the little pieces of ice. When a piece proved to be
too big to go through the funnel Elmer broke it again.
Cleggett noticed that there were five of these small holes in the box,
and that Elmer was slowly working his way down the length of it from
hole to hole, sitting astride of it the while.
From the way in which he worked, and the care with which he conserved
every smallest particle of ice, Elmer's motto seemed to be: "Haste
not, waste not." But he did not appear to derive any great
satisfaction from his task, let alone joy. In fact, Elmer seemed to be
a joyless individual; one who habitually looked forward to the worst.
On his broad face, of the complexion described in police reports as
"pasty," melancholy sat enthroned. His nose was flat and broad, and
flat and broad were his cheek bones, too. His hair was cut very short
everywhere except in front; in front it hung down to his eyebrows in a
straggling black fringe or "bang." Not that the fringe would have
covered the average person's forehead; this "bang" was not long; but
the truth is that Elmer's forehead was lower than the average person's
and therefore easily covered. He had what is known in certain circles
as a cauliflower, or chrysanthemum, ear.
But melancholy as he looked, Elmer had evidently had his moments of
struggle against dejection. One of these moments had been when he
bought the clothes he was wearing. His hat had a bright, red and black
band around it; his tweed suit was of a startling light gray, marked
off into checks with stripes of green; his waistcoat was of lavender,
and his hose were likewise of lavender, but red predominated in both
his shirt and his necktie. His collar was too high for his short neck,
and seemed to cause him discomfort. But this attempt at gayety of dress
was of no avail; one felt at once that it was a surface thing and had
no connection with Elmer's soul; it stood out in front of the
background of his sorrowful personality, accentuating the gloom, as a
blossom may grow upon a bleak rock. As Elmer carefully dropped ice,
piece by piece, into the oblong box, progressing slowly from hole to
hole, Cleggett thought he had never seen a more depressed young man.
Captain Abernethy approached Cleggett. There was hesitation in the
brown old man's feet, there was doubt upon his wrinkled brow, but there
was the consciousness of duty in the poise of his shoulders, there was
determination in his eyes.
The blonde lady laughed softly as the sailing-master of the Jasper B.
saluted the owner of the vessel.
"He is going to tell you," she said to Cleggett, including the Captain
himself in her flashing look and her remark, "he is going to tell you
that you really should get rid of me and my boxes at once--I can see it
in his face!"
Captain Abernethy stopped short at this, and stared. It was precisely
what he HAD planned to say after drawing Cleggett discreetly aside.
But it is rather startling to have one's thoughts read in this manner.
He frowned at the lady. She smiled at him. The smile seemed to say to
the Cap'n: "You ridiculous old dear, you! You KNOW that's what you
were going to advise, so why deny it? I've found you out, but we both
might just as well be good-humored about it, mightn't we?"
"Ma'am," said the Cap'n, evidently struggling between a suddenly born
desire to quit frowning and a sense that he had a perfect right to
frown as much as he wished, "Ma'am, if you was to ask me, I'd say
ridin' on steamships and ridin' on sailin' vessels is two different
matters entirely."
"Cap'n Abernethy," said Cleggett, attempting to indicate that his
sailing master's advice was not absolutely required, "if you have
something to say to me, perhaps later will do just as well."
"As fur as the Jasper B. is concerned," said the Cap'n, ignoring
Cleggett's remark, and still addressing the lady, "I dunno as you could
call her EITHER a sailin' vessel, OR a steamship, as at present
constituted."
"You want to get me off your boat at once," said the lady. "You know
you do." And her manner added: "CAN'T you act like a good-natured old
dear? You really are one, you know!"
The Cap'n became embarrassed. He began to fuss with his necktie, as if
tying it tighter would assist him to hold on to his frown. He felt the
frown slipping, but it was a point of honor with him to retain it.
"She WILL be a sailin' vessel when she gets her sticks into her," said
the Cap'n, fumbling with his neckwear.
"Let me fix that for you," said the lady. And before the Cap'n could
protest she was arranging his tie for him. "You old sea
captains!------" she said, untying the scarf and making the ends even.
"As if anyone could possibly be afraid to sail in anything one of YOU
had charge of!" She gave the necktie a little final pat. "There, now!"
The Captain's frown was gone past replacement. But he still felt that
he owed something to himself.
"If you was to ask me," he said, turning to Cleggett, "whether what I'd
got to say to you would do later, or whether it wouldn't do later, I'd
answer you it would, or it wouldn't, all accordin' to whether you
wanted to hear it now, or whether you wanted to hear it later. And as
far as SAILIN' her is concerned, Mr. Cleggett, I'll SAIL her, whether
you turn her into a battleship or into one of these here yachts. I
come of a seafarin' fambly."
And then he said to the lady, indicating the tie and bobbing his head
forward with a prim little bow: "Thank ye, ma'am."
"Isn't he a duck!" said the lady, following him with her eyes, as he
went behind the cabin. There the Cap'n chewed, smoked, and fished,
earnestly and simultaneously, for ten minutes.
Indeed, the blonde lady, from the moment when Elmer began to put ice
into the box, seemed to have regained her spirits. The little dog,
which was an indicator of her moods, had likewise lost its nervousness.
When Kuroki had tea ready, the dog lay down at his mistress' feet,
beside the table.
"Dear little Teddy," said the lady, patting the animal upon the head.
"Teddy?" said Cleggett.
"I have named him," she said, "after a great American. To my mind, the
greatest--Theodore Roosevelt. His championship of the cause of votes
for women at a time when mere politicians were afraid to commit
themselves is enough in itself to gain him a place in history."
She spoke with a kindling eye, and Cleggett had no doubt that there was
before him one of those remarkable women who make the early part of the
twentieth century so different from any other historical period. And
he was one with her in her admiration for Roosevelt--a man whose
facility in finding adventures and whose behavior when he had found
them had always made a strong appeal to Cleggett. If he could not have
been Cleggett he would have liked to have been either the Chevalier
d'Artagnan or Theodore Roosevelt.
"He is a great man," said Cleggett.
But the lady, with her second cup of tea in her hand, was evidently
thinking of something else. Leaning back in her chair, she said to
Cleggett:
"It is no good for you to deny that you think I'm a horridly
unconventional sort of person!"
Cleggett made a polite, deprecatory gesture.
"Yes, yes, you do," she said, decidedly. "And, really, I am! I am
impulsive! I am TOO impulsive!" She raised the cup to her lips,
drank, and looked off towards the western horizon, which the sun was
beginning to paint ruddily; she mused, murmuring as if to herself:
"Sir Archibald always thought I was too impulsive, dear man."
After a meditative pause she said, leaning her elbows on the table and
gazing searchingly into Cleggett's eyes:
"I am going to trust you. I am going to reward your kindness by
telling you a portion of my strange story. I am going to depend upon
you to understand it."
Cleggett bowed and murmured his gratitude at the compliment. Then he
said:
"You could trust me with------" But he stopped. He did not wish to be
premature.
"With my life. I could trust you with my life," finished the lady,
gravely. "I know that. I believe that. I feel it, somehow. It is
because I do feel it that I tell you----" She paused, as if, after
all, she lacked the courage. Cleggett said nothing. He was too fine in
grain to force a confidence. After a moment she continued: "I can tell
you this," she said, with a catch in her voice that was almost a sob,
"that I am practically friendless. When you call a taxicab for me in a
few moments, and I leave you, with Elmer and my boxes, I shall have no
place to go."
"But, surely, madam----"
"Do not call me madam. Call me Lady Agatha. I am Lady Agatha
Fairhaven. What is your name?"
Cleggett told her.
"You have heard of me?" asked Lady Agatha.
Cleggett was obliged to confess that he had not. He thought that a
shade of disappointment passed over the lady's face, but in a moment
she smiled and remarked:
"How relative a thing is fame! You have never heard of me! And yet I
can assure you that I am well enough known in England. I was one of
the very first militant suffragettes to break a window--if not the very
first. The point is, indeed, in dispute. And were it not for my
devotion to the cause I would not now be in my present terrible
plight--doomed to wander from pillar to post with that thing" (she
pointed with a shudder to the box into which Elmer was still gloomily
poking ice)-"chained to me like a--like a----" She hesitated for a
word, and Cleggett, tactlessly enough, with some vague recollection of
a classical tale in his mind, suggested:
"Like a corpse."
Lady Agatha turned pale. She gazed at Cleggett with terror-stricken
eyes, her beautiful face became almost haggard in an instant; he
thought she was about to faint again, but she did not. As he looked
upon the change his words had wrought, filled with wonder and
compunction, Cleggett suddenly divined that her occasional flashes of
gayety had been, all along, merely the forced vivacity of a brave and
clever woman who was making a gallant fight against total collapse.
"Mr. Cleggett," she said, in a voice that was scarcely louder than a
whisper, "I am going to confide everything to you--the whole truth. I
will spare myself nothing; I will throw myself upon your mercy.
"I firmly believe, Mr. Cleggett--I am practically certain--that the box
there, upon which Elmer is sitting, contains the body of Reginald
Maltravers, natural son of the tenth Earl of Claiborne, and the cousin
of my late husband, Sir Archibald Fairhaven."