Nevertheless Mr. Sleight sat down and at once abstracted himself so
completely as to be apparently in utter oblivion of the man who
entered. He was lithe and Indian-looking; bearing in dress and manner
the careless slouch without the easy frankness of a sailor.
"Well!" said Sleight without looking up.
"I was only wantin' to know ef you had any news for me, boss?"
"News?" echoed Sleight as if absently; "news of what?"
"That little matter of the Pontiac we talked about, boss," returned the
Lascar with an uneasy servility in the whites of his teeth and eyes.
"Oh," said Sleight, "that's played out. It's a regular fraud. It's an
old forecastle yarn, my man, that you can't reel off in the cabin."
The sailor's face darkened.
"The man who was looking into it has thrown the whole thing up. I tell
you it's played out!" repeated Sleight, without raising his head.
"It's true, boss--every word," said the Lascar, with an appealing
insinuation that seemed to struggle hard with savage earnestness. "You
can swear me, boss; I wouldn't lie to a gentleman like you. Your man
hasn't half looked, or else--it must be there, or--"
"That's just it," said Sleight slowly; "who's to know that your friends
haven't been there already?--that seems to have been your style."
"But no one knew it but me, until I told you, I swear to God. I ain't
lying, boss, and I ain't drunk. Say--don't give it up, boss. That man
of yours likely don't believe it, because he don't know anything about
it. I DO--I could find it."
A silence followed. Mr. Sleight remained completely absorbed in his
papers for some moments. Then glancing at the Lascar, he took his pen,
wrote a hurried note, folded it, addressed it, and, holding it between
his fingers, leaned back in his chair.
"If you choose to take this note to my man, he may give it another
show. Mind, I don't say that he WILL. He's going to Sacramento
to-night, but you could go down there and find him before he starts.
He's got a room there, I believe. While you're waiting for him, you
might keep your eyes open to satisfy yourself."
"Ay, ay, sir," said the sailor, eagerly endeavoring to catch the eye of
his employer. But Mr. Sleight looked straight before him, and he
turned to go.
"The Sacramento boat goes at nine," said Mr. Sleight quietly.
This time their glances met, and the Lascar's eye glistened with subtle
intelligence. The next moment he was gone, and Mr. Sleight again
became absorbed in his papers.
Meanwhile Renshaw was making his way back to the Pontiac with that
light-hearted optimism that had characterized his parting with Sleight.
It was this quality of his nature, fostered perhaps by the easy
civilization in which he moved, that had originally drawn him into
relations with the man he had just quitted; a quality that had been
troubled and darkened by those relations, yet, when they were broken,
at once returned. It consequently did not occur to him that he had
only selfishly compromised with the difficulty; it seemed to him enough
that he had withdrawn from a compact he thought dishonorable; he was
not called upon to betray his partner in that compact merely to benefit
others. He had been willing to incur suspicion and loss to reinstate
himself in his self-respect, more he could not do without justifying
that suspicion. The view taken by Sleight was, after all, that which
most business men would take--which even the unbusiness-like Nott would
take--which the girl herself might be tempted to listen to. Clearly he
could do nothing but abandon the Pontiac and her owner to the fate he
could not in honor avert. And even that fate was problematical. It
did not follow that the treasure was still concealed in the Pontiac,
nor that Nott would be willing to sell her. He would make some excuse
to Nott--he smiled to think he would probably be classed in the long
line of absconding tenants--he would say good-by to Rosey, and leave
for Sacramento that night. He ascended the stairs to the gangway with
a freer breast than when he first entered the ship.
Mr. Nott was evidently absent, and after a quick glance at the
half-open cabin door, Renshaw turned towards the galley. But Miss
Rosey was not in her accustomed haunt, and with a feeling of
disappointment, which seemed inconsistent with so slight a cause, he
crossed the deck impatiently and entered his room. He was about to
close the door when the prolonged rustle of a trailing skirt in the
passage attracted his attention. The sound was so unlike that made by
any garment worn by Rosey that he remained motionless, with his hand on
the door. The sound approached nearer, and the next moment a white
veiled figure with a trailing skirt slowly swept past the room.
Renshaw's pulses halted for an instant in half superstitious awe. As
the apparition glided on and vanished in the cabin door he could only
see that it was the form of a beautiful and graceful woman--but nothing
more. Bewildered and curious, he forgot himself so far as to follow
it, and impulsively entered the cabin. The figure turned, uttered a
little cry, threw the veil aside, and showed the half troubled, half
blushing face of Rosey.
"I--beg--your pardon," stammered Renshaw; "I didn't know it was you."
"I was trying on some things," said Rosey, recovering her composure and
pointing to an open trunk that seemed to contain a theatrical
wardrobe--"some things father gave me long ago. I wanted to see if
there was anything I could use. I thought I was all alone in the ship,
but fancying I heard a noise forward I came out to see what it was. I
suppose it must have been you."
She raised her clear eyes to his, with a slight touch of womanly
reserve that was so incompatible with any vulgar vanity or girlish
coquetry that he became the more embarrassed. Her dress, too, of a
slightly antique shape, rich but simple, seemed to reveal and accent a
certain repose of gentlewomanliness, that he was now wishing to believe
he had always noticed. Conscious of a superiority in her that now
seemed to change their relations completely, he alone remained silent,
awkward, and embarrassed before the girl who had taken care of his
room, and who cooked in the galley! What he had thoughtlessly
considered a merely vulgar business intrigue against her stupid father,
now to his extravagant fancy assumed the proportions of a sacrilege to
herself.
"You've had your revenge, Miss Nott, for the fright I once gave you,"
he said a little uneasily, "for you quite startled me just now as you
passed. I began to think the Pontiac was haunted. I thought you were
a ghost. I don't know why such a ghost should FRIGHTEN anybody," he
went on with a desperate attempt to recover his position by gallantry.
"Let me see--that's Donna Elvira's dress--is it not?"
"I don't think that was the poor woman's name," said Rosey simply; "she
died of yellow fever at New Orleans as Signora somebody."
Her ignorance seemed to Mr. Renshaw so plainly to partake more of the
nun than the provincial that he hesitated to explain to her that he
meant the heroine of an opera.
"It seems dreadful to put on the poor thing's clothes, doesn't it?" she
added.
Mr. Renshaw's eyes showed so plainly that he thought otherwise, that
she drew a little austerely towards the door of her state-room.
"I must change these things before any one comes," she said dryly.
"That means I must go, I suppose. But couldn't you let me wait here or
in the gangway until then, Miss Nott? I am going away to-night, and I
mayn't see you again." He had not intended to say this, but it slipped
from his embarrassed tongue. She stopped with her hand on the door.
"You are going away?"
"I--think--I must leave to-night. I have some important business in
Sacramento."
She raised her frank eyes to his. The unmistakable look of
disappointment that he saw in them gave his heart a sudden throb and
sent the quick blood to his cheeks.
"It's too bad," she said, abstractedly. "Nobody ever seems to stay
here long. Captain Bower promised to tell me all about the ship and he
went away the second week. The photographer left before he finished
the picture of the Pontiac; Monsieur de Ferrieres has only just gone,
and now YOU are going."
"Perhaps, unlike them, I have finished my season of usefulness here,"
he replied, with a bitterness he would have recalled the next moment.
But Rosey, with a faint sigh, saying, "I won't be long," entered the
state-room and closed the door behind her.
Renshaw bit his lip and pulled at the long silken threads of his
moustache until they smarted. Why had he not gone at once? Why was it
necessary to say he might not see her again--and if he had said it, why
should he add anything more? What was he waiting for now? To endeavor
to prove to her that he really bore no resemblance to Captain Bower,
the photographer, the crazy Frenchman de Ferrieres? Or would he be
forced to tell her that he was running away from a conspiracy to
defraud her father--merely for something to say? Was there ever such
folly? Rosey was "not long," as she had said, but he was beginning to
pace the narrow cabin impatiently when the door opened and she returned.
She had resumed her ordinary calico gown, but such was the impression
left upon Renshaw's fancy that she seemed to wear it with a new grace.
At any other time he might have recognized the change as due to a new
corset, which strict veracity compels me to record Rosey had adopted
for the first time that morning. Howbeit, her slight coquetry seemed
to have passed, for she closed the open trunk with a return of her old
listless air, and sitting on it rested her elbows on her knees and her
oval chin in her hands.
"I wish you would do me a favor," she said after a reflective pause.
"Let me know what it is and it shall be done," replied Renshaw quickly.
"If you should come across Monsieur de Ferrieres, or hear of him, I
wish you would let me know. He was very poorly when he left here, and
I should like to know if he was better. He didn't say where he was
going. At least, he didn't tell father; but I fancy he and father
don't agree."
"I shall be very glad of having even THAT opportunity of making you
remember me, Miss Nott," returned Renshaw with a faint smile; "I don't
suppose either that it would be very difficult to get news of your
friend--everybody seems to know him."
"But not as I did," said Rosey with an abstracted little sigh.
Mr. Renshaw opened his brown eyes upon her. Was he mistaken? was this
romantic girl only a little coquette playing her provincial airs on
him? "You say he and your father didn't agree? That means, I suppose,
that YOU and he agreed?--and that was the result."
"I don't think father knew anything about it," said Rosey simply.
Mr. Renshaw rose. And this was what he had been waiting to hear!
"Perhaps," he said grimly, "you would also like news of the
photographer and Captain Bower, or did your father agree with them
better?"
"No," said Rosey quietly. She remained silent for a moment, and
lifting her lashes said, "Father always seemed to agree with YOU, and
that--" she hesitated.
"That's why YOU don't."
"I didn't say that," said Rosey with an incongruous increase of
coldness and color. "I only meant to say it was that which makes it
seem so hard you should go now."
Notwithstanding his previous determination Renshaw found himself
sitting down again. Confused and pleased, wishing he had said more--or
less--he said nothing, and Rosey was forced to continue.
"It's strange, isn't it--but father was urging me this morning to make
a visit to some friends at the old Ranch. I didn't want to go. I like
it much better here."
"But you cannot bury yourself here forever, Miss Nott," said Renshaw
with a sudden burst of honest enthusiasm. "Sooner or later you will be
forced to go where you will be properly appreciated, where you will be
admired and courted, where your slightest wish will be law. Believe
me, without flattery, you don't know your own power."
"It doesn't seem strong enough to keep even the little I like here,"
said Rosey with a slight glistening of the eyes. "But," she added
hastily, "you don't know how much the dear old ship is to me. It's the
only home I think I ever had."
"But the Ranch?" said Renshaw.
"The Ranch seemed to be only the old wagon halted in the road. It was
a very little improvement on outdoors," said Rosey with a little
shiver. "But this is so cozy and snug and yet so strange and foreign.
Do you know I think I began to understand why I like it so since you
taught me so much about ships and voyages. Before that I only learned
from books. Books deceive you, I think, more than people do. Don't
you think so?"
She evidently did not notice the quick flush that covered his cheeks
and apparently dazzled his troubled eyelid for she went on
confidentially.
"I was thinking of you yesterday. I was sitting by the galley door,
looking forward. You remember the first day I saw you when you
startled me by coming up out of the hatch?"
"I wish you wouldn't think of that," said Renshaw, with more
earnestness than he would have made apparent.
"I don't want to either," said Rosey, gravely, "for I've had a strange
fancy about it. I saw once when I was younger, a picture in a print
shop in Montgomery Street that haunted me. I think it was called 'The
Pirate.' There was a number of wicked-looking sailors lying around the
deck, and coming out of a hatch was one figure with his hands on the
deck and a cutlass in his mouth."
"Thank you," said Renshaw.
"You don't understand. He was horrid-looking, not at all like you. I
never thought of HIM when I first saw you; but the other day I thought
how dreadful it would have been if some one like him and not like you
had come up then. That made me nervous sometimes of being alone. I
think father is too. He often goes about stealthily at night, as if he
was watching for something."
Renshaw's face grew suddenly dark. Could it be possible that Sleight
had always suspected him, and set spies to watch--or was he guilty of
some double intrigue?
"He thinks," continued Rosey with a faint smile, "that some one is
looking around the ship, and talks of setting bear-traps. I hope
you're not mad, Mr. Renshaw," she added, suddenly catching sight of his
changed expression, "at my foolishness in saying you reminded me of the
pirate. I meant nothing."
"I know you're incapable of meaning anything but good to anybody, Miss
Nott, perhaps to me more than I deserve," said Renshaw with a sudden
burst of feeling. "I wish--I wish--you would do ME a favor. YOU asked
me one just now." He had taken her hand. It seemed so like a mere
illustration of his earnestness, that she did not withdraw it. "Your
father tells you everything. If he has any offer to dispose of the
ship, will you write to me at once before anything is concluded?" He
winced a little--the sentence of Sleight, "What's the figure you and
she have settled upon?" flashed across his mind. He scarcely noticed
that Rosey had withdrawn her hand coldly.
"Perhaps you had better speak to father, as it is HIS business.
Besides, I shall not be here. I shall be at the Ranch."
"But you said you didn't want to go?"
"I've changed my mind," said Rosey listlessly. "I shall go to-night."
She rose as if to indicate that the interview was ended. With an
overpowering instinct that his whole future happiness depended upon his
next act, he made a step towards her, with eager outstretched hands.
But she slightly lifted her own with a warning gesture, "I hear father
coming--you will have a chance to talk BUSINESS with him," she said,
and vanished into her state-room.