PLAIN SAILOR TALK
Miss Hatch had some inkling of the Prince's intention when she ushered
him into the Wellington study, and as she met Sara in the hall on the
way out of the library, she held a gloomy countenance.
"Mrs. Van Valkenberg," she said in response to Sara's bright smile of
greeting, "please don't think me impertinent, but--will you, if
possible, see that the Prince is not alone with Miss Wellington to-day?
And--cannot you prod that terribly sluggish McCall?"
Sara looked at the young woman wonderingly for a minute and then held
out her hand, laughing.
"Miss Hatch, you 're a jewel."
Sara found Jack near the garage. But she did not have much success
with him. He was grumpy and, replying to Sara's assertion that the
situation was rapidly becoming rife with disagreeable possibilities, he
replied that he did not care a very little bit, and that Anne could
marry all the princes in Christendom for all he cared. So Sara,
flushing with impatience, told him he was an idiot and that she would
like to shake him. The only satisfaction she derived from the incident
was that Anne, who came upon them as they were parting, was grumpy,
too. Synchronous moods in the two persons whose interests she held so
closely to heart was a symptom, she told herself, that gave warrant for
hope.
Rimini had turned up with the new car and in it Anne, Sara, Koltsoff,
and Robert Marie went to the Casino. Mrs. Wellington drove to market
in her carriage. Mr. Wellington remained in his study and among other
things had Buffalo on the telephone for half an hour. Armitage spent
the morning with the boys and showed them several shifty boxing and
wrestling tricks which won Ronald to him quite as effectually as the
jiu-jitsu grip had won his younger brother the preceding day.
At luncheon, Anne's peevish mood had not diminished, which, to Sara,
would have been a source of joy had she not feared that it was due to
the fact that Koltsoff had not been good company all the morning. He
was, in truth, quite at his wits' end to account for the behavior of
Yeasky, who had been instructed to get into communication with him by
ten o'clock, and had failed to do so. Thus Koltsoff, even when with
Anne, had been preoccupied and in need of a great deal of entertaining.
Armitage took him to the city after lunch and as usual was instructed
to return to The Crags. This gave Jack opportunity to see Chief
Roberts and to learn that Yeasky was resting easily and cheerfully,
apparently eager to live up to the very letter of his contract.
Anne was in her room when he returned and Sara was with her. Koltsoff
came back in a taxicab in a frightful state of mind, bordering on
mental disintegration, about four o'clock--just in time to keep an
appointment with his host and Marie to drive to the Reading Room. As
he crossed the veranda, a French bull pup ran playfully between his
feet and nearly tripped him. He kicked at the animal, which fled
squealing down the steps.
"Hey, you," cried the peppery Ronald, "that's my dog."
The Prince turned with a half snarl and flung himself into the house.
"The great big Turk!" said Ronald, turning to Armitage. "What does he
want here, anyway?"
It was nearly five o'clock when the telephone of the garage rang and
Armitage was ordered to bring Anne's car to the house. Her manner was
quiet, her voice very low, as she gave him his orders.
"To town by the back road," she said. She stopped at one or two stores
along Thames Street and finally settling herself back in her seat,
said, "Now you can drive home."
Armitage looked at her for a second.
"Do you mind if I take a roundabout way? I should like to talk to you."
Anne returned his gaze without speaking.
Then she nodded slowly.
"Yes, if you like," she said.
"Thank you."
He drove the car up the steep side streets, across Bellevue Avenue, and
then headed into a little lane. Here he stopped. Overhead ash and
beech and maple trees formed a continuous arch. Gray stone walls
hedged either side. Beyond each line of wall, pleasant orchards
stretched away. The sidewalks were velvet grass. Birds of brilliant
plumage flashed among the foliage and their twittering cries were the
only sounds. Patches of gold sunlight lay under the orchard trees,
level rays flowed heavily through the branches and rested on the
moss-grown stones.
The pastoral beauty, the great serenity, the utter peace seemed to
preclude words. And the spell was immediately upon the two. The
down-turned brim of her hat shaded her eyes, but permitted sunlight to
lie upon her mouth and chin and to rest where her hair rippled and
flowed about her bare neck.
She raised her face--and her eyes, even, level, wondering, sought his.
His eyes were the first to fall, but in them she knew what she had
read. Now the sunlight had fallen so low that it lay on her like a
garment of light--she seemed some daughter of Hesperus, glorified. The
waning afternoon had grown cooler and several blue-white clouds went
careening overhead. She looked at them.
"How beautiful!" she said. Then she looked at him again with her
steady eyes. "You wished to talk, you said."
Jack nodded.
"Yes, I wish to, but I--I don't know exactly how to say it."
She was smiling now. "How may I help you?"
He shook his head doggedly.
"I am a sailor, Miss Wellington."
"You mean I am to hear plain sailor talk?" she quoted. "Good. I am
ready."
He began with the expression of a man taking a plunge.
"Miss Wellington, I could say a great deal so far--so far as I am
concerned, that I have no right to say, now. . . . But--are you going
to marry Prince Koltsoff?"
She started forward and then sank back.
"You must not ask that," she said.
"I know--I understand," he said rapidly, "but--but--you mustn't marry
him, you know."
"_Must n't!_"
"Miss Wellington, I know, it is none of my business. And yet--Don't
you know," he added fiercely, "what a girl you are? I know. I have
seen! You are radiant, Miss Wellington, in spirit as in face. Any man
knowing what Koltsoff is, who could sit back and let you waste yourself
on him would be a pup. Thornton, of the _Jefferson_, has his record.
Write to Walker, _attaché_ at St. Petersburg, or Cook at Paris, or
Miller at London--they will tell you. Why, even in Newport--"
Jack paused in his headlong outburst and then continued more
deliberately.
"It is not for me to indict the man. I could not help speaking because
you are you. I cannot do any more than warn you. If I transgress, if
I am merely a blundering fool--if you are not what I take you
for--forget what I have said. Send me away when we return."
She had been listening to him, as in a daze. Now she shook her head.
"I shall not do that," she said. "Did you take employment with us to
say what you have said to me?"
"No."
She hesitated a moment.
"I suppose all men of Koltsoff's sort are the same," she said musingly.
"I am not quite so innocent as that. We are wont to accept our
European noblemen as husbands with no question as to the wild oats,
immediately behind them--or without considering too closely the wild
oats that are to be strewn--afterwards. Ah, don't start; that is the
way we expatriates are educated--no, not that; but these are the
lessons we absorb. And so--" she was looking at Armitage with a hard
face, "so the things that impressed you so terribly--I appreciate and
thank you for your motives in speaking of them--do not appear so awful
to me."
Jack, his clean mind in a whirl, was looking at her aghast.
"You--you--Anne Wellington! You don't mean that!"
She flung her hands from her.
"Thank you," she said. "Don't I? Oh, I hate it all!" she cried
wildly, "the cross purposings of life; the constant groping--being
unable to see clearly--the triumph of lower over higher things--I hate
them all. Ah," she turned to Jack pitifully, "promise me for life, in
this place of peace, the rest and purity and beauty and love of all
this--promise, and I shall stay here now with you, from this minute and
never leave it, though Pyramus or King Midas, as you please, beckon
from beyond this mossy wall."
"Are you speaking metaphorically?" Jack's voice quivered. "For if you
are, I--"
She interrupted, laughing mirthlessly.
"I do not know how I was speaking. Don't bother. I am not worth it.
I might have been had I met you sooner--Jack Armitage. For I have
learned of you--some things. Don't," she raised her hand as Jack bent
forward to speak. "You must n't bother, really. Last night I lived
with you a big, clean, thrilling experience and saw strong men doing
men's work in the raw, cold, salt air--and I saw a new life. And
then--" she was looking straight ahead--"then I was led into a morass
where the air was heavy like the tropics, and things all strange,
unreal. And why--why now the doubt which of the two I had rather
believe to-night. You were too late. I bade you come to us. I am
glad, I am proud that I did--for now I know the reason. But--" she
smiled wanly at him, "it should have been sooner."
"Is--it--too late?" Jack's mouth was shut tight, the muscles bulging
on either side of his jaw.
"Is it? You--I must wait and see. I--I dreamed last night and it was
of the sea, men rushing aboard a black battleship, rising and falling
on great inky waves. It was good--so good--to dream that; not the
other. Wait. . . . It is to be lived out. I am weak. . . . But
there is a tide in the affairs of men--and women. Perhaps you--"
She stopped abruptly.
"Let us drive out of here, Mr. Armitage. Here, in this pure, wonderful
place I feel almost like Sheynstone's Jessie."
"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.
She smiled.
"Not what you thought I meant," she said gently. "Now, drive away,
please."
As they returned to the house, Mr. Wellington and his friend were
alighting from the touring car; Koltsoff was not with them. As soon as
he saw his daughter, Mr. Wellington, whose face was flushed, called
Anne to him.
"Say, Anne," he said, "is that Prince of yours a lunatic? Or what is
he?
"Why, no, father. Of course not. Why do you ask?"
"Well, then, if he is n't crazy he is a plain, ordinary, damned fool.
He was like a chicken with his head off all the afternoon, calling up
on the telephone, sending telegrams, and then, between pauses, telling
me he would have to leave right after the ball for Europe and wanting
us all to sail with him. Then, at the last minute, some whiskered
tramp came to the porch where we were sitting and the first thing I
knew he had excused himself for the evening and was going off up the
street with that hobo, both of them flapping their arms and exclaiming
in each other's faces like a couple of candidates for a padded cell.
Duke Ivan was a pill beside this man. And that is saying a whole lot,
let me tell you."
"Why, father!" exclaimed the girl. "I could cry! We are having that
dinner for him to-night, and--and oh--"
She rushed into the house and found her mother in her room.
"Mother," she said, "Prince Koltsoff has gone off again! He was with
father at the Reading Room and hurried away with a man, whom father
describes as a tramp, saying he must be excused for the evening."
"Very well," said Mrs. Wellington placidly; "we will have to have the
play--without Hamlet, nevertheless."
"But what shall I do?"
"You might ask McCall."
"Mother! Please! What can we do?"
"Frankly, I don't know, Anne," said Mrs. Wellington. "I confess that
this situation in all its ramifications has gone quite beyond me. It
is altogether annoying. But let me prophesy: Koltsoff will not miss
your dinner. He impresses me as a young man not altogether without
brains--although they are of a sort."
Mrs. Wellington was right. Koltsoff put in an appearance in time to
meet Anne's guests, but the Russian bear at the height of his moulting
season--or whatever disagreeable period he undergoes--is not more
impossible than was Prince Koltsoff that night.