Something fluttered from the envelope to her feet. She stooped and
picked it up. It was the tiniest and most delicate of orchids, purple,
with a glow of gold at its heart. To her inflamed pride, it seemed the
final insult that he should send such a message and such a reminder,
without a word of explanation or plea for pardon. Pardon she never
would have granted, but at least he might have had the grace of shame.
“Have you read it?” asked the patient voice from without.
“Yes. There is no answer.”
“Dr. Pruyn said there wouldn’t be.”
“Then why are you waiting?”
“To see you.”
“Oh, Fitz, I’m too worn out, and I’ve a splitting headache. Won’t it
wait?”
“No.” The voice was gently inflexible.
“More messages?”
“No; something I must tell you. Will you come out?”
“I suppose so.”
Her tone was utterly listless and limp. Utterly listless and limp, she
looked, too, as she opened the door and stood waiting.
“Miss Polly, it’s about the woman at Perkins’s—at Dr. Pruyn’s house.”
Her eyes dilated with anger.
“I won’t hear! How dare you come to me—”
“You must! Don’t make it harder for me than it is.”
She looked up, startled, and noted the haggard lines in his face.
“I’ll hear it if you think I should, Fitz.”
“She is dead.”
“Dead? His—his wife?”
“She wasn’t his wife. She was a helpless leper, whom he was trying to
cure with some new serum. He had to do it secretly because there is a
law forbidding any one to harbor a leper.”
“Oh, Fitz!” she cried. “And she died of it?”
“No. They killed her. Last night.”
“They? Who?”
“Government agents, probably. They were after Pruyn.”
“How horrible! And—and Mrs. Pruyn. Where was she?”
“There isn’t any Mrs. Pruyn. There never was.”
“But the Dutch permit! It was for Dr. Pruyn and his wife.”
“Sherwen misread the form. So did I. It read for Dr. Pruyn and a woman.
He hoped to take her to Curaçao and complete his experiment.”
“That’s what he meant when he spoke of being lawless, and I’ve been
thinking the basest things of him for it!” The girl, dazed by a flash
of complete enlightenment, caught at Carroll’s arm with beseeching
hands. “Where is he, Fitz?”
“On his way down the mountain. Perhaps down here by now.”
“He’s coming to the ship?” she asked.
“No; he doesn’t expect to see you again. He was coming down to make
sure that we got off safely.”
“Fitz, dear Fitz, I must see him!”
“Miss Polly,” he said miserably, “I’ll do anything I can.”
“Oh, poor Fitz!” she cried pityingly, her eyes filling with tears. “I
wish for your sake it wasn’t so. And you have been so splendid about
it!”
“I’ve tried to make amends, and play fair. It hasn’t been easy. Shall I
go back and look for him? It’s a small town, and I can find him.”
“Yes. I’ll write a note. No; I won’t. Never mind. I’ll manage it. Fitz,
go and rest. You’re worn out,” she said gently.
Back into her stateroom went Miss Polly. From that time forth no man
saw her nor woman, either, except perhaps her maid, and maids are dark
and discreet persons on occasion. If this particular one kept her own
counsel when she saw a trim but tremulous figure drop lightly over the
starboard rail of the Polly far forward, pick up a small traveling-bag
from the pier, step behind the opportune screen of a load of coffee on
a flat car, and reappear to view only as a momentary swish of skirt far
away at the shore end; if this same maid told Mr. Thatcher Brewster,
half an hour later, that Miss Polly was asleep in her stateroom, and
begged that she be disturbed on no account, as she was utterly worn
out, who shall blame her for her silence on the one occasion or her
speech on the other? She was but obeying, albeit with tearful
misgivings, duly constituted authority.
Eight o’clock struck on the bell of the little Protestant mission
church on the tiny plaza; struck and was welcomed by the echoes, and
passed along to eventual silence. Within two minutes after, there was a
special stir and movement on the pier, a corresponding stir and
movement on board the trim craft, a swishing of great ropes, and a
tooting of whistles. White foam churned astern of her. A
comic-supplement-looking pelican on a buoy off to port flapped her a
fantastic farewell. The blockade-defying yacht Polly was off for blue
waters and the freedom of the seas.
On the shore, feeling woefully helpless and alone, she who had been the
jewel and joy of the Polly bit her lips and closed her eyes, in a
tremulous struggle against the dismal fear:—
“Suppose he doesn’t love me, after all!”
XIV.
THE YELLOW FLAG
The departing whistle of the yacht Polly struck sharply to the heart of
a desolate figure seated on a bench in the blazing, dusty, public
square of Puerto del Norte, waiting out his first day of pain. A
kiskadee bird, the only other creature foolish enough to risk the hot
bleakness of the plaza at that hour, flitted into a dust-coated palm,
inspected him, put a tentative query or two, decided that he was of no
possible interest, and left the Unspeakable Perk to his own
cogitations.
So deep in wretchedness were the cogitations that he did not hear the
light, hesitant footstep. But he felt in every vein and fiber the
appealing touch on his shoulder.
“Good God! What are YOU doing here?” he cried, leaping to his feet.
There was no awkwardness or shyness in his speech now; only
wonder-stricken joy.
“I came back to see you.”
“But the yacht! Your ship!”
“She has left.”
“No! She mustn’t! Not without you! You can’t stay here. It’s too
dangerous.”
“I must. They think I’m aboard. I left a note for papa. He won’t get it
until they’re at sea. And they can’t come back for me, can they?”
“No—yes—they must! I must see Stark and Wisner at once.”
“To send me away?”
“Yes.”
“Without forgiving me?”
“Forgiving? There’s no question of that between you and me.”
“There is. Fitzhugh told me everything—all about the poor dead woman.”
“Ah, he shouldn’t have done that.”
“He should!” She stamped a little willful foot. “What else could he
do?”
“Why, yes,” he agreed thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s so. After all, a
man can’t bear the names that Carroll does and go wrong on the big
inner things. He has met his test, and stood it. For he cares very
deeply for you.”
“Poor Fitz!” she sighed.
“But here we’re wasting time!” he cried in a panic. “Where can I leave
you?”
“Do you want to leave me?”
“Want to!” he groaned. “Can’t you understand that I’ve got to get you
to the yacht!”
“Oh, beetle man, beetle man, don’t you WANT me?” she cried dolorously.
“Didn’t you mean your note?”
“Mean it? I meant it as I’ve never meant anything in the world. But
you—what do you mean? Do you mean that you’ll—you’ll let the yacht go
without you—and—and—and stay here, and m-m-marry me?”
“If you should ask me,” she said, half-laughing, half-crying, “what
else could I do? I’m alone and deserted. And there’s only you in the
world.”
“Miss P-P-Polly,” he began, “I—I can’t believe—”
“It’s true!” she cried, and held out two yearning hands to him. “And if
you stammer and stutter and—and—and act like the Unspeakable Perk
_now_, I’ll—I’ll howl!”
If she had any such project, the chance was lost on the instant of the
warning, as he caught her to him and held her close.
“Oh!” she cried, trying to push him away. “Do you know, sir, that this
is a public square?”
“Well, I didn’t choose it,” he reminded her, laughing in pure joy, with
a boyish note new to her ear. “Anyway, there are only us two under the
sun.” And he drew her close again, whispering in her ear.
“Oh—oh, is that the language of medical science?” she reproved.
At this point, generic curiosity overcame the feathered eavesdropper in
the tree above.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?”—“What’s he say?”
The girl turned a flushed and adorable face upward.
“I won’t tell you. It’s for me alone,” she declared joyously. “But
you’ll never stop saying it, will you, dear?”
“Never, as long as we both shall live. And that reminds me,” he said
soberly. “We must arrange about being married.”
“Oh, that reminds you, does it?” she mocked. “Just incidentally, like
that.”
Boom! Boom! Boom! The mission clock kept patiently at it until its
suggestion struck in.
“Of course!” he cried. “Mr. Lake, the missionary, will marry us. And
we’ll have Stark and Wisner for witnesses. How long does it take a
bride to get ready? Would half an hour be enough?”
“It’s rather a short engagement,” she remarked demurely. “But if it’s
all the time we’ve got—”
“It is. But, darling, we’ll have to ride for it afterward, and get
across to the mainland. I’ve no right to let you in for such a risk,”
he cried remorsefully.
“You couldn’t help yourself,” she teased saucily. “I ran you down like
one of your own beetles. Besides, what does that permit for the Dutch
ship say?”
“That’s for myself and a woman—the leper woman. Not for myself and my
wife.”
“Well, I’m a woman, aren’t I? And it doesn’t say that the woman
_mustn’t_ be your wife.” She blushed distractingly.
“Caesar! Of course it doesn’t! What luck! We’ll be in Curaçao
to-morrow. I must see Wisner about getting us off. But, Polly, dearest
one, you’re sure? You haven’t let yourself be carried away by that
foolishness of mine yesterday?”
“Sure? Oh, beetle man!” She put her hands on his shoulders and bent to
his ear.
The sulphur-colored winged Paul Pry stuck an impertinent head out from
behind a palm leaf.
“Qu’est-ce qu’elle dit? Qu’est-ce qu’elle dit?”
For the second and last time in his adult life the beetle man threw a
stone at a bird.
Four hours later six powerful black oarsmen rowed a boat containing two
passengers and practically no luggage out across the huge lazy swells
of the Caribbean toward a smudge of black smoke.
“Look!” cried that one of the passengers who wore huge goggles. “There
goes the flag!”
A square of yellow bunting slid slowly up the pierhead staff of the
dock corporation, and spread in the light shore breeze.
“That’s the modern flaming sword,” he continued. “The color stirs
something inside me. Ugly, isn’t it?”
“It is ugly,” she confessed thoughtfully. “Yet it’s the flag we fight
under, too, isn’t it? And we’d fight for it if we had to, just as we
fought for the other—our own.”
“I love your ‘we,’” he laughed happily.
She nestled closer to him.
“Are you still hating the Caribbean?”
“I? I’m loving it the second-best thing in the world.”
“But I loved it first,” she reminded him jealously. “Dearest,” she
added, with one of her swift swoops of thought, “what was that funny
title the British Secretary of Legation had?”
“What? Oh, Captain the Honorable Carey Knowles?”
“Yes. Well, I shall have a much nicer, more picturesque title than that
when we come back to Caracuña—dear, dirty, dangerous, queer, riotous,
plague-stricken old Caracuña!”
“Then my liege ladylove intends to come back?” he asked.
“Of course. Some time. And in Caracuña I shall insist on being Mrs. the
Unspeakable Perk.”