The comte de Souvary, towards whom Florence betrayed an
inclination that seemed at times to deserve a warmer word, was a
French gentleman nearing forty. He was a man of distinguished
appearance, with all the gaiety, grace, and charm that, in spite
our popular impression to the contrary, are not seldom found
amongst the nobles of his country. His undoubted wealth and
position redeemed his suit from any appearance of being inspired
by a mercenary motive. Indeed, he was accustomed himself to be
pursued, and Florence and he recognised in each other a fellowship
of persecution.
"We are ze Pale Faces," he would say, "and ze ozzers zey are
Indians closing in from every corner of ze Far Vest for our
scalps!"
He was, in many ways, the most accomplished man that Florence had
ever known. He was a violinist, a singer, a poet, and yet these
were but a part of his various gifts; for in everything out of
doors he was no less a master and took the first place as though
by right. He was the embodiment of everything daring and manly; it
seemed natural for him to excel; he simply did not know what fear
was. He was always ready to smile and turn a little joke, whether
speeding in his automobile at a breakneck pace or ballooning above
the clouds in search of what was to him the breath of life: "ze
sensation." He could never see a new form of "ze sensation"
without running for it like a child for a new toy. His whole
attitude towards the world was that of a furious curiosity. He
could not bear to leave it, he said, until all he had learned how
all the wheels went round. He had stood on the Matterhorn. He had
driven the Sud express. He had exhausted lions and tigers. In
moods of depression he would threaten to follow Andree to the pole
and figure out his plans on the back of an envelope.
"Magnificent!" he would cry, growing instantly cheerful at the
prospect. "Think of ze sensation!"
He spoke English fluently, though shaky on the TH and the W, and
it was first hand and not mentally translated. His pronunciation
of Far West, two words that were constantly on his lips, was an
endless entertainment to Florence, and out of a sense of humour
she forebore to correct him. It was typical, indeed, of his
ignorance of everything American. Europe was at his fingers' ends;
there was not a country in it he was not familiar with; intimately
familiar, knowing much of what went on behind the scenes, and the
lives and characters of the men, and not less the women, who
shaped national policies and held the steering-wheels of state.
"Muravief would never do that," he would say. "He is
constitutionally inert, and his imagination has carried him
through too many unfought wars for him to throw down the gage now.
He smokes cigarettes and dreams of endless peace. I had many talks
with him last year and found him impatient of any subject but the
redemption of the paper rouble!"
But his mind had never crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He still
thought that the Civil War had been between North and South
America. To him the United States was a vague region peopled with
miners, pork-packers, and Indians; a jumble of factories, forests,
and red-shirted men digging for gold, all of it fantastically seen
through the medium of Buffalo Bill's show. It was a constant
wonder to him that such conditions had been able to produce a
woman like Florence Fenacre.
"You are the flower of ze prairie," he would say, "an atavism of
type, harking back a dozen generations to aristocratic
progenitors, having nothing in common with the Pathfinder your
Papa!"
"He wasn't a pathfinder," said Florence, "he was a whaler
captain."
But this to the count seemed only the more remarkable. He raised
the fabric of a fresh romance on the instant, especially (on
Florence telling him more about her forebears) when he began to
mix up the Pilgrim Fathers, the Revolutionary War, and the Alabama
in one brisk panorama of his ever dear "Far Vest"!
Florence's acquaintance with the comte de Souvary went back to
Majorca, where, in the course of one of those sudden blows, so
common on the Mediterranean, their respective yachts had fled for
shelter. His own was a large auxiliary schooner called the
Paquita, a lofty, showy vessel which he sailed himself with his
usual courage and audacity. He had the reputation of scaring his
unhappy guests--when any were bold enough to accept his
invitations--to within the proverbial inch of their lives; and
they usually changed "ze sensation" for the nearest mail-boat
home. Florence and he had struck up a warm friendship from the
start, and for the whole summer their vessels were inseparable,
sailing everywhere in company and anchoring side by side.
The count had a way of courtship peculiarly his own. He made it
apparent from the first how deeply he had been stirred by
Florence's beauty and how ready he was to offer her his hand; but
as a matter of fact he never did so in set terms, and treated her
more as a comrade than a divinity. He talked of his own devotion
to her as something detached and impersonal, willing as much as
she to laugh over it and treat it lightly. He was never jealous,
never exacting, and seemed to be as happy to share her with others
as when he had her all alone in one of their tete-a-tetes. What he
coveted most of all was her intimacy, her confidence, the frank
expression of her own true self; and in this exchange he was
willing to give as much as he received and often more. Sometimes
she was piqued at his apparent indifference--at his lack of any
stronger feeling for her--seeming to detect in him something of
her own insouciance and coldness.
"You really don't care for me a bit," she said once. "I am only
another form of 'ze sensation'--like going up in a balloon or
riding on the cow-catcher."
"I keep myself well in hand," he returned. "I am not approaching
the terrible age of forty without knowing a little at least about
women and their ways."
"A little!" she exclaimed ironically. "You know enough to write a
book!"
"Zat book has taught me to go very slow," he said. "Were I in my
young manhood I'd come zoop, like that, and carry you off in ze
Far Vest style. But I can never hope to be that again with any
woman; my decreasing hair forbids, if nozing else--but my way is
to make myself indispensable--ze old dog, ze old standby, as you
Americans say--the good old harbour to which you will come at last
when tired of ze storms outside!"
"Your humility is a new trait," said Florence.
"It's none ze less real because it is often hid," said the count.
"I watch you very closely, more closely than perhaps you even
think. You have all the heartlessness of youth and health and
beauty. I would be wrong to put my one little piece of money on
the table and lose all; and so I save and save, and play ze only
game that offers me the least chance--ze waiting game!"
"I believe that's true," said Florence.
"Were I to act ze distracted lover, you would laugh in my face,"
he went on earnestly. "Were I to propose and be refused, my pride
would not let me--my instinct as gentleman would not let me--go
trailing after you with my long face. The idyll would be over. I
would go!"
"There are times when I think a heap of you," said Florence
encouragingly.
"Oh, I know so well how it would be," he continued. "A week of
doubt--of fever; a rain of little notes; and then with your good
clear honest Far Vest sense you would say: No, mon cher, it is
eempossible!"
"Yes, I suppose I would," said Florence.
"I would rather be your friend all my life," said the count, "than
to be merely one of the rejected. I have no ambition to place my
name on that already great list. I have never yet asked a woman to
marry me, and when I do I care not for the expectation of being
refused!"
"You are like all Europeans," said Florence, "you believe in a
sure thing."
"My heart is not on my sleeve," he returned, "and I value it too
highly to lose it without compensation."
"It is interesting to hear all your views," said Florence. "I am
sure I appreciate the compliment highly. It's a new idea, this of
the wolf making a confidant of the lamb."
"Oh, my dear!" he broke out, "I am only a poor devil holding back
from committing a great stupidity."
"Is that how you describe marrying me?" she said lightly.
"Ze day will come," he said, disregarding her question, "I think
it will--I hope it will--when you will say to me: My dear fellow,
I am tired of all this fictitious gaiety; of all this rush and
bustle and flirtation; of this life of fever and emptiness. I long
for peace and do not know where to find it. I am like a piece of
music to whom one waits in vain for the return to the keynote.
Tell me where to find it or else I die!"
"Rather forward of me to say all that, Count," observed the girl.
"But suppose I did--what then?"
The count opened wide his arms.
"I would answer: here!" he said.
V
Thus the bright days passed, amid animating scenes, with memories
of sky and cloud and noble headlands and stately, beautiful ships.
Like two ocean sweethearts the Minnehaha and the Paquita took
their restless way together, side by side in port, inseparable at
sea. At night the one lit the other's road with a string of ruby
lanterns and kept the pair in company across the dark and silent
water. Their respective crews, not behindhand in this splendid
camaraderie of ships, fraternised in wine-shops and strolled
through the crooked foreign streets arm in arm. Breton and
American, red cap and blue, sixty of the one and eighty of the
other--they were brothers all and cemented their friendship in
blood and gunpowder, in tattooed names, flags and mottoes, after
the time-honoured and artless manner of the sea.
In the drama of life it is often the least important actors who
are happiest, and the stars themselves are not always to be the
most envied. Florence, torn between her ambition and her love,
knew what it was to toss all night on her sleepless bed and wet
the pillow with her tears. De Souvary, who found himself every day
deeper in the toils of his ravishing American, chafed and
struggled with unavailing pangs; and as for Frank Rignold, he
endured long periods of black depression as he watched from afar
the steady progress of his rival's suit; and his moody face grew
moodier and exasperation rose within him to the rebellion point.
By September the two yachts were lying in Cowes, and already there
was some talk of winter plans and a possible voyage to India. The
count was enthusiastic about the project, as he was about anything
that could keep him and Florence together, and he had ordered a
stack of books and spent hours at a time with the mistress of the
Minnehaha reading over Indian Ocean directories and plotting
imaginary courses on the chart.
With the prospect of so extended a trip before him, Frank found
much to be done in the engine-room, for their suggested cruise
would be likely to carry them far out of the beaten track, and he
had to be prepared for all contingencies. A marine engine requires
to be perpetually tinkered, and an engineer's duty is not only to
run it, but to make good the little defects and breakdowns that
are constantly occurring. Frank was a daily visitor at the local
machine-shop, and his business engagements with Mr. Derwent, the
proprietor, led insensibly to others of the social kind.
Derwent's house was close by his works, and Frank's trips ashore
soon began to take in both. Derwent had a daughter, a black-
haired, black-eyed, pink-cheeked girl, named Cassie, one of those
vigorous young English beauties that men would call stunning and
women bold. She did not wait for any preliminaries, but
straightway fell in love with the handsome American engineer that
her father brought home. She made her regard so plain that Frank
was embarrassed, and was not a bit put off at his reluctance to
play the part she assigned to him.
"That's always my luck," she remarked with disarming candour, "a
poor silly fool who always likes them that don't like me and
spurns them that do!" And then she added, with a laugh, that he
ought to be tied up, "for you are a cruel handsome man, Frank, and
my heart goes pitapat at the very sight of you!"
She called him Frank at the second visit; and at the third seated
herself on the arm of his chair and took his hand and held it.
"Can't you ever forget that girl in Yankee-land?" she said. "She
ain't here, is she, and why shouldn't you steal a little harmless
fun? There's men who'd give their little finger to win a kiss from
me--and you sit there so glum and solemn, who could have a bushel
for the asking!"
For all Frank's devotion to Florence he could not but be flattered
at being wooed in this headlong fashion. He was only a man after
all, and she was the prettiest girl in port. He did not resist
when she suddenly put her arms around him and pressed his head
against her bosom, calling him her boy and her darling; but
remained passive in her embrace, pleased and yet ashamed, and
touched to the quick with self-contempt.
"You mustn't," he said, freeing himself. "Cassie, it's wrong--it's
dreadful. You mustn't think I love you, because I don't."
"Yes, but I am going to make you," she said with splendid
effrontery, looking at herself in the glass and patting her
rumpled hair. "See what you have done to me, you bad boy!"
Had she been older or more sophisticated, Frank would have been
shocked at this reversal of the sexes. But in her self-avowed and
unashamed love for him she was more like a child than a woman; and
her good-humour and laughter besides seemed somehow to belittle
her words and redeem the affair from any seriousness. Frank tried
to stay away, for his conscience pricked him and he did not care
to drift into such an unusual and ambiguous relation with
Derwent's handsome daughter. But Cassie was always on the watch
for him and he could not escape from the machine-works without
falling into one of her ambushes. She would carry him off to tea,
and he never left without finding himself pledged to return in the
evening. In his loneliness, hopelessness, and desolation he found
it dangerously sweet to be thus petted and sought after. Cassie
made no demands of him and acquiesced with apparent cheerfulness
in the implication that he loved another woman. She humbly
accepted the little that was left over, and, though she wept many
hot tears in secret, outwardly at least she never rebelled or
reproached him. She knew that to do either would be to lose him.
In fact she made it very easy for him to come, and gave up her
girlish treasure of affection without any hope of reward. Frank,
by degrees, discovered a wonderful comfort in being with her. It
was balm to his wounds and bruises; and, like someone who had long
been out in the cold, he warmed himself, so to speak, before that
bright fire, and found himself growing drowsy and contented.
It must not be supposed that all this went on unremarked, or that
in the gossip of the yacht Frank and Cassie Derwent did not come
in for a considerable share of attention. It passed from the
officers' mess to the saloon, and Florence bit her lip with anger
and jealousy when the joke went round of the chief engineer's
"infatuation." In revenge she treated Frank more coldly than ever,
and went out of her way to be agreeable to de Souvary, especially
when the former was at hand and could be made a spectator of her
lover-like glances and a warmth that seemed to transcend the
limits of ordinary friendship. She made herself utterly unhappy
and Frank as well. The only one of the trio to be pleased was the
count.
She made no objection when Frank asked her permission to show the
ship to Derwent and his daughter.
"You must be sure and introduce me," she said, with a sparkle of
her eyes that Frank was too unpresumptuous to understand. "They
say that she is a raving little beauty and that you are the happy
man!"
Frank hurriedly disclaimed the honour.
"Oh, no!" he said. "But she is really very sweet and nice, and I
think we owe a little attention to her father."
"Oh, her FATHER!" said Florence, sarcastically emphasising the
word.
"I hope you don't think there is anything in it," he exclaimed
very anxiously. "I suppose there has been some tittle-tattle--I
can read it in your face--but there's not a word of truth in it,
not a word, I assure you."
"I don't care the one way or other, Frank," she said. "You needn't
explain so hard. What does it matter to me, anyway?" and with that
she turned away to cordially greet the count as he came aboard.
The two women met in the saloon. Florence at once assumed the
great lady, the heiress, the condescending patrician; Cassie
flushed and trembled; and in a buzz of commonplaces the stewards
served tea while the two women covertly took each other's measure.
Florence grew ashamed of her own behavior, and, unbending a
little, tried to put her guests at ease and led Cassie on to talk.
Then it came out about the dance that Derwent and his daughter
were to give the following night.
"Frank and me have been arranging the cotillon," said Cassie, and
then she turned pink to her ears at having called him by his first
name before all those people. "I mean Mr. Rignold," she added,
amid everyone's laughter and her own desperate confusion.
Florence's laughter rang out as gaily as anyone's, and apparently
as unaffectedly, and she rallied Cassie with much good humour on
her slip.
"So it's Frank already!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Miss Derwent! don't
you trust this wicked chief of mine. He is a regular heart-
breaker!"
Cassie cried when Frank and she returned home and sat together on
the porch.
"She's a proud, haughty minx," she burst out, "and you love her--
and as for me I might as well drown myself."
Frank attempted to comfort her.
"Oh, you needn't try to blind me," she said bitterly. "I--I
thought it was a girl in America, Frank, a girl like me--just
common and poor and perhaps not as nice as I am. And you know she
wouldn't wipe her feet on you," she went on viciously--"she so
grand with her yachts and her counts and 'Oh, I think I'll run
over to Injya for the winter, or maybe it's Cairo or the Nile,'
says she! What kind of a chance have you got there, Frank, you in
your greasy over-alls and working for her wages? Won't you break
your heart just like I am breaking mine, I that would sell the
clothes off my back for you and follow you all over the world!"
Frank protested that she was mistaken; that it wasn't Miss Fenacre
at all; that it was absurd to even think of such a thing.
"Oh, Frank, it's bad enough as it is without your lying to me,"
she said, quite unconvinced. "You've set your eyes too high, and
unhappiness is all that you'll ever get from the likes of her.
You're a fool in your way and I'm a fool in mine, and maybe when
she's married to the count and done for, you'll mind the little
girl that's waiting for you in Cowes!" She took his hand and
kissed it, telling him with a sob that she would ever remain
single for his sake.
"But I don't want you to, Cassie," he said. "You're talking like a
baby. What's the good of waiting when I am never coming back?"
"You say that now," she exclaimed, "but my words will come back to
you in Injya when you grow tired of her ladyship's coldness and
disdain; and I'm silly enough to think you'll find them a comfort
to you out there, with nothing to do but to think and think, and
be miserable."