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A Splendid Hazard by Harold MacGrath

H >> Harold MacGrath >> A Splendid Hazard




"I heard you sing in Paris a few years ago," said M. Ferraud.

"Yes?" Hildegarde von Mitter wondered who this little man could be.

"And you sing no more?"

"No. The bird has flown; only the woman remains." They were at the
table now, and she absently plucked the flowers beside her plate.

"Ah, to sing as you did, and then to disappear, to vanish! You had no
right to do so. You belonged to the public," animatedly.

"The public is always selfish; it always demands more than any single
person can give to it. Pardon?" she said as Cathewe leaned to speak to
her. "I did not hear."

M. Ferraud nibbled his crisp celery.

"I asked, what will you do?" repeated Cathewe for her ear only.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you know that he was here?"

"I should not have been seated at this table had I known."

"Some day you are going to tell me all about it," he asserted; "and you
are going to smile when you answer me."

"Thank you. I forgot. My dear friend, I am never going to tell you
all about it. Why did you not come first?" her voice vibrating.

"You still love him."

"That is not kind," striving hard to keep the smile on her trembling
lips. "Oh, I beg of you, do not make this friendship impossible. Do
not rob me of the one man I trust."

Cathewe motioned aside the fish and reached for his sauterne. "I have
loved you faithfully and loyally for seven years. I have tried to win
you by all those roads a man may honorably traverse in quest of the one
woman. For seven years; and for something like three I have stayed
away at your command. Will you believe it? Sometimes my hands ache
for his throat . . . Smile, they are looking."

It was a crooked smile. "Why did I ever tell you?"

"Why did you ever tell me . . . only part? It is the other part I wish
to know. Till I learn what that is I shall never leave you. You will
find that there is a difference between love and infatuation."

"As I have never known infatuation I can not tell the difference. Now,
no more, unless you care to see me break down before them. For if you
tell me that you have loved me seven years, I have loved him eight,"
cruelly, for Cathewe was pressing her cruelly.

"Devil take him! What do you find in the man?"

"What do you find in me?" her eyes filled with anger.

"Forgive me, Hildegarde; I am blind and mad to-night. I did not expect
to find him here either."

Breitmann had tried ineffectually to read their lips. She had given
her word, and once given, he knew of old that she never broke it; but
he was keenly alive that in some way he was the topic of the inaudible
conversation. As he sat here to-night he knew why he had never loved
Hildegarde, why in fact, he had never loved any woman. The one great
passion which comes in the span of life was centered in the girl beside
him, dividing her moments between him and Fitzgerald. Strange, but he
had not known it till he saw the two women together. For once his nice
calculations had ceased to run smoothly; there appeared now a knot in
the thread for which he saw no untying.

"You do not sing now?" asked Laura across the table.

"No," Hildegarde answered, "my voice is gone."

"Oh, I am so sorry."

"It does not matter. I can hum a little to myself; there is yet some
pleasure in that. But in opera, no, never again. Has not Mrs.
Coldfield told you? No? Imagine! One night in Dresden, in the middle
of the aria, my voice broke miserably and I could not go on."

"And her heart nearly broke with it," interposed Mrs. Coldfield, with
the best intentions, nearer the truth than she knew. "I am sorry,
Laura, that I never told you before."

Hildegarde laughed. "Sooner or later this must happen. I worked too
hard, perhaps. At any rate, the opera will know me no more."

There was the hard blue of flint in Cathewe's eyes as they met and held
Breitmann's. There was a duel, and the latter was routed. But hate
burned fiercely in the breast against the man who could compel him to
lower his eyes. Some day he would pay back that glance.

Now, M. Ferraud had missed nothing. He twisted the talk into other
channels with his usual adroitness, but all the while there was
bubbling in his mind the news that these two men had met before. The
history of Hildegarde von Mitter was known to him. But how much did
she know, or this man Cathewe? The woman was a thoroughbred. He,
Anatole Ferraud, knew; it was his business to know; and that she should
happen upon the scene he considered as one of these rare good pieces of
luck that fall to the lot of few. There would be something more than
treasure hunting here; an intricate comedy-drama, with as many
well-defined sides as a diamond. He ate his endive with pleasure and
sipped the old yellow _Pol Roger_ with his eyes beaming toward the
gods. To be, after a fashion, the prompter behind the scenes; to be
able to read the final line before the curtain! Butterflies and
butterflies and pins and pins.

Did Laura note any of the portentous glances, those exchanged between
the singer and Cathewe and Breitmann? Perhaps. At all events she felt
a curiosity to know how long Hildegarde von Mitter had known her
father's secretary. There was no envy in her heart as again she
acknowledged the beauty of the other woman; moreover, she liked her and
was going to like her more. Impressions were made upon her almost
instantly, for good or bad, and rarely changed.

She turned oftenest to Fitzgerald, for he made particular effort to
entertain, and he succeeded better than he dreamed. It kept turning
over in her mind what a whimsical, capricious, whirligig was at work.
It was droll, this man at her side, chatting to her as if he had known
her for years, when, seven or eight days ago, he had stood, a man all
unknown to her, on a city corner, selling plaster of Paris statuettes
on a wager; and but for Mrs. Coldfield, she had passed him for ever.
Out upon the prude who would look askance at her for harmless daring!

"Drop into my room before you turn in," urged Fitzgerald to Cathewe.

"That I shall, my boy. I've some questions to ask of you."

But a singular idea came into creation, and this was for him, Cathewe,
to pay Breitmann a visit on the way to Fitzgerald's room. Not one man
in a thousand would have dared put this idea into a plan of action.
But neither externals nor conventions deterred Cathewe when he sought a
thing. He rapped lightly on the door of the secretary's room.

"Come in."

Cathewe did so, gently closing the door behind him. Breitmann was in
his shirt-sleeves. He rose from his chair and laid down his cigarette.
A faint smile broke the thin line of his mouth. He waited for his
guest, or, rather, this intruder, to break the silence. And as Cathewe
did not speak at once, there was a tableau during which each was
speculatively busy with the eyes.

"The vicissitudes of time," said Cathewe, "have left no distinguishable
marks upon you."

Breitmann bowed. He remained standing.

And Cathewe had no wish to sit. "I never expected to see you in this
house."

"A compliment which I readily return."

"A private secretary; I never thought of you in that capacity."

"One must take what one can," tranquilly.

"A good precept." Cathewe rolled the ends of his mustache, a trifle
perplexed how to put it. "But there should be exceptions. What," and
his voice became crisp and cold, "what was Hildegarde von Mitter to
you?"

"And what is that to you?"

"My question first."

"I choose not to answer it."

Again they eyed each other like fencers.

"Were you married?"

Breitmann laughed. Here was his opportunity to wring this man's heart;
for he knew that Cathewe loved the woman. "You seem to be in her
confidence. Ask her."

"A poltroon would say as much. There is a phase in your make-up I have
never fully understood. Physically you are a brave man, but morally
you are a cad and a poltroon."

"Take care!" Breitmann stepped forward menacingly.

"There will be no fisticuffs," contemptuously.

"Not if you are careful. I have answered your questions; you had
better leave at once."

"She is loyal to you. It was not her voice that broke that night; it
was her heart, you have some hold over her."

"None that she can not throw off at any time." Breitmann's mind was
working strangely.

"If she would have me I would marry her tomorrow," went on Cathewe,
playing openly, "I would marry her to-morrow, priest or protestant, for
her religion would be mine."

There was a spark of admiration in Breitmann's eyes. This man Cathewe
was out of the ordinary. Well, as for that, so was he himself. He
walked silently to the door and opened it, standing aside for the other
to pass. "She is perfectly free. Marry her. She is all and more than
you wish her to be. Will you go now?"

Cathewe bowed and turned on his heel. Breitmann had really got the
better of him.

A peculiar interview, and only two strong men could have handled it in
so few words. Not a word above normal tones; once or twice only, in
the flutter of the eyelids or in the gesture of the hands, was there
any sign that had these been primitive times the two would have gone
joyously at each other's throats.

"I owed her that much," said Breitmann as he locked the door.

"It did not matter at all to me," was Cathewe's thought, as he knocked
on Fitzgerald's door and heard his cheery call, "I only wanted to know
what sort of man he is."


"Oh, I really don't know whether I like him or not," declared
Fitzgerald. "I have run across him two or three times, but we were
both busy. He has told me a little about himself. He's been knocked
about a good deal. Has a title, but doesn't use it."

"A title? That is news to me. Probably it is true."

"I was surprised to learn that you knew him at all."

"Not very well. Met him in Munich mostly."

A long pause.

"Isn't Miss Killigrew just rippin'? There's a comrade for some man.
Lucky devil, who gets her! She is new to me every day."

"I think I warned you."

"You were a nice one, never to say a word that you knew the admiral!"

"Are you complaining?"

Fitzgerald laughed; no not exactly; he wasn't complaining.

"You remember the caravan trails in the Lybian desert; the old ones on
the way to Khartoum? The pathway behind her is like that, marked with
the bleached bones of princely and ducal and common hopes." Cathewe
stretched out in his chair. "Since she was eighteen, Jack, she has
crossed the man-trail like a sandstorm, and quite as innocently, too."

"Oh, rot! I'm no green and salad youth."

"Your bones will be only the tougher, that's all."

Another pause.

"But what's your opinion regarding Breitmann?"

Cathewe laced his fingers and bent his chin on them. "There's a great
rascal or a great hero somewhere under his skin."




CHAPTER XV

THEY GO A-SAILING

Five o'clock in the afternoon, and a mild blue sea flashing under the
ever-deepening orange of the falling sun. Golden castles and gray
castles and castles of shadowed-white billowed in the east; turrets
rose and subsided and spires of cloud-cities formed and re-formed. The
yacht _Laura_, sleek and swan-white, her ensign and colors folding and
unfolding, lifting and sinking, as the shore breeze stirred them, was
making ready for sea; and many of the villagers had come down to the
water front to see her off. Very few sea-going vessels, outside of
freighters, ever stopped in this harbor; and naturally the departures
of the yacht were events equalled only by her arrivals. The railroad
station was close to the wharves, and the old sailors hated the sight
of the bright rails; for the locomotive had robbed them of the
excitement of the semi-weekly packets that used to coast up and down
between New York and Philadelphia.

"Wonder what poor devil of a pirate is going to have his bones turned
over this trip?" said the station-agent to Mr. Donovan, who, among
others on the station platform, watched the drab anchor as it clanked
jerkily upward to the bows, leaving a swivel and a boil on the waters
which had released it so grudgingly.

"I guess it ain't goin' t' be any ol' pirate this time," replied Mr.
Donovan, with a pleasurable squeeze of the pocket-book over his heart.

"Well, I hope he finds what he's going after," generously. "He is the
mainstay of this old one-horse town. Say, she's a beauty, isn't she?
Why, man, that anchor alone is worth more than we make in four months.
And think of the good things to eat and drink. If I had a million, no
pirates or butterflies for mine. I'd hie me to Monte Carlo and bat the
tiger all over the place."

Mr. Donovan knew nothing definite about Monte Carlo, but he would have
liked to back up against some of those New York contractors on their
own grounds.

"Hi! There she goes. Good luck!" cried the station-agent, swinging
his hat with gusto.

The yacht swam out gracefully. There was a freshening blow from the
southwest, but it would take the yacht half an hour to reach the
deep-sea swells outside. Her whistle blew cheerily and was answered by
the single tug-boat moored to the railroad wharf. And after that the
villagers straggled back to their various daily concerns. Even the
landlord of Swan's Hotel sighed as he balanced up his books. Business
would be slack for some days to come.


The voyagers were gathered about the stern-rail and a handkerchief or
two fluttered in the wind. For an hour they tarried there, keeping in
view the green-wooded hills and the white cottages nestling at their
base. And turn by turn there were glimpses of the noble old house at
the top of the hill. And some looked upon it for the last time.

"I've had a jolly time up there," said Fitzgerald. The gulls swooped,
as they crossed and recrossed the milky wake. "Better time than I
deserved."

"Are you still worried about that adventure?" Laura demanded. "Dismiss
it from your mind and let it be as if we had known each other for many
years."

"Do you really mean that?"

"To be sure I do," promptly. "I have stepped to the time of convention
so much that a lapse once in a while is a positive luxury. But Mrs.
Coldfield had given me a guaranty before I addressed you, so the
adventure was only a make-believe one after all."

There never was a girl quite like this one. He purloined a sidelong
glance at her which embraced her wholly, from the chic gray cap on the
top of her shapely head to the sensible little boots on her feet. She
wore a heavy, plaid coat, with deep pockets into which her hands were
snugly buried; and she stood braced against the swell and the wind
which was turning out strong and cold. The rich pigment in the blood
mantled her cheeks and in her eyes there was still a bit of captive
sunshine. He knew now that what had been only a possibility was an
assured fact. Never before had he cursed his father's friends, but he
did so now, silently and earnestly; for their pilfering fingers and
their plausible lies had robbed his father's son of a fine inheritance.
Money. Never had he desired it so keenly. A few weeks ago it had
meant the wherewithal to pay his club-dues and to support a decent
table when he traveled. Now it was everything; for without it he never
could dare lift his eyes seriously to this lovely picture so close to
him, let alone dream of winning her. He recalled Cathewe's light
warning about the bones of ducal hopes. What earthly chance had he?
Unconsciously he shrugged.

"You are shrugging!" she cried, noting the expression; for, if he was
secretly observing her, she was surreptitiously contemplating his own
advantages.

"Did I shrug?"

"You certainly did."

"Well," candidly, "it was the thought of money that made me do it."

"I detest it, too."

"Good heavens, I didn't say I detested it! What I shrugged about was
my own dreary lack of it."

"Bachelors do not require much."

"That's true; but I no longer desire to remain a bachelor." The very
thing that saved him was the added laughter, forced, miserably forced.
Fool! The words had slipped without his thinking.

"Gracious! That sounds horribly like a proposal." She beamed upon him
merrily.

And his heart sank, for he had been earnest enough, for all his
blunder. Manlike, he did not grasp the fact that under the
circumstance merriment was all she could offer him, if she would save
him from his own stupidity.

"But I do hate money," she reaffirmed.

"I shouldn't. Think of what it brings."

"I do; begging letters, impostures, battle-scarred titles, humbugging
shop-keepers, and perhaps one honest friend in a thousand. And if I
married a title, what equivalent would I get for my money, to put it
brutally? A chateau, which I should have to patch up, and tolerance
from my husband's noble friends. Not an engaging prospect."

She threw a handful of biscuit to the gulls, and there was fighting and
screaming almost in touch of the hands. Then of a sudden the red rim
of the sun vanished behind the settling landscape, and all the grim
loneliness of the sea rose up to greet them.

"It is lonely; let us go and prepare for dinner. Look!" pointing to a
bright star far down the east. "And Corsica lies that way."

"And also madness!" was his thought.

"Oh, it seems not quite true that we are all going a-venturing as they
do in the story-books. The others think we are just going to Funchal.
Remember, you must not tell. Think of it; a real treasure, every franc
of which must tell a story of its own; love, heroism and devotion."

"Beautiful! But there must be a rescuing of princesses and fighting
and all that. I choose the part of remaining by the princess."

"It is yours." She tilted back her head and breathed and breathed.
She knew the love of living.

"Lucky we are all good sailors," he said. "There will be a fair sea on
all night. But how well she rides!"

"I love every beam and bolt of her."

Shoulder to shoulder they bore forward to the companionway, and
immediately the door banged after them.

Breitmann came out from behind the funnel and walked the deck for a
time. He had studied the two from his shelter. What were they saying?
Oh, Fitzgerald was clever and strong and good to look at, but . . . !
Breitmann straightened his arms before him, opened and shut his hands
violently. Like that he would break him if he interfered with any of
his desires. It would be fully twenty days before they made Ajaccio.
Many things might happen before that time.

Two or three of the crew were lashing on the rail-canvas, and the snap
and flap of it jarred on Breitmann's nerves. For a week or more his
nerves had been very close to the surface, so close that it had
required all his will to keep his voice and hands from shaking. As he
passed, one of the sailors doffed his cap and bowed with great respect.

"That's not the admiral, Alphonse," whispered another of the crew,
chuckling. "It's only his privit secretary."

"Ah, I haf meestake!"

But Alphonse had made no mistake. He knew who it was. His mates did
not see the smile of irony, of sly ridicule, which stirred his lips as
he bowed to the passer. Immediately his rather handsome effeminate
face resumed a stolid vacuity.

His name was not Alphonse; it was a captious offering by the crew,
which, on this yacht, never went further than to tolerate the addition
of a foreigner to their mess. He had signed a day or two before
sailing; he had even begged for the honor to ship with Captain
Flanagan; and he gave his name as Pierre Picard, to which he had no
more right than to Alphonse. As Captain Flanagan was too good a sailor
himself to draw distinctions, he was always glad to add a foreign
tongue to his crew. You never could tell when its use might come in
handy. That is why Pierre Picard was allowed to drink his soup in the
forecastle mess.

Breitmann continued on, oblivious to all things save his cogitations.
He swung round the bridge. He believed that he and Cathewe could
henceforth proceed on parallel lines, and there was much to be grateful
for. Cathewe was quiet but deep; and he, Breitmann, had knocked about
among that sort and knew that they were to be respected. In all, he
had made only one serious blunder. He should never have permitted the
vision of a face to deter him. He should have taken the things from
the safe and vanished. It had not been, a matter of compunction. And
yet . . . Ah, he was human, whatever his dream might be; and he loved
this American girl with all his heart and mind. It was not lawless
love, but it was ruthless. When the time was ripe he would speak.
Only a little while now to wait. The course had smoothed out, the
sailing was easy. The man in the chimney no longer bothered him.
Whoever and whatever he was, he had not shot his bolt soon enough.

Hildegarde von Mitter. He stopped against the rail. The yacht was
burying her nose now, and the white drift from her cut-water seemed
strangely luminous as it swirled obliquely away in the fading twilight.
Hildegarde von Mitter. Was she to be the flaw in the chain? No, no;
there should be no regret; he had steeled his heart against any such
weakness. She had been necessary, and he would be a fool to pause over
a bit of sentimentality. Her appearance had disorganized his nerves,
that was all. Peering into his watch he found that he had only half an
hour before dinner. And it may be added that he dressed with singular
care.

So did Fitzgerald, for that matter.

It took Cathewe just as long, but he did not make two or three
selections of this or that before finding what he wanted. He was
engrossed most of the time in the sober contemplation of the rubber
flooring or the running sea outside the port-hole.

And this night Hildegarde von Mitter was meditating on the last throw
for her hopes. She determined to cast once more the full sun of her
beauty into the face of the man she loved; and if she failed to win,
the fault would not be hers. Why could she not tear out this maddening
heart of hers and fling it to the sea? Why could she not turn it
toward the man who loved her? Why, why? Why should God make her so
unhappy? Why such injustice? Why this twisted interlacing of lives?
And yet, amid all these futile seekings, with subconscious deftness her
hands went on with their appointed work. Never again would the
splendor of her beauty burn as it did this night.

Laura, alone among them all, went serenely about her toilet. She was
young, and love had not yet spread its puzzle before her feet.

As for the others, they were on the far side of the hill, whence the
paths are smooth and gentle and the prospect is peacefulness and the
retrospect is dimly rosal. They dressed as they had done those twenty
odd years, plainly.

On the bridge the first officer was standing at the captain's side.

"Captain," he shouted, "where did you get that Frenchman?"

"Picked him up day before yestiddy. Speaks fair English an' a bit o'
Dago. They're allus handy on a pleasure-boat. He c'n keep off th'
riffraff boatmen. An' _you_ know what persistent cusses they be in the
Med'terranean. Why?"

"Oh, nothing, if he's a good sailor. Notice his hands?"

"Why, no!"

"Soft as a woman's."

"Y' don't say! Well, we'll see 'em tough enough before we sight
Funchal. Smells good up here; huh?"

"Yes; but I don't mind three months on land, full pay. Not me. But
this Frenchman?"

"Oh, he had good papers from a White Star liner; an' you can leave it
to me regardin' his lily-white hands. By th' way, George, will you
have them bring up my other leg? Th' salt takes th' color out o' this
here brass ferrule, an' rubber's safer."

"Yes, sir."

There was one vacant chair in the dining-salon. M. Ferraud was
indisposed. He could climb the highest peak, he could cross
ice-ridges, with a sheer mile on either side of him, with never an
attack of vertigo; but this heaving mystery under his feet always got
the better of him the first day out. He considered it the one flaw in
an otherwise perfect system. Thus, he misled the comedy and the
tragedy of the eyes at dinner, nor saw a woman throw her all and lose
it.




CHAPTER XVI

CROSS-PURPOSES

"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Fitzgerald, venturing his
head into M. Ferraud's cabin.

"Nothing; to-morrow it will all be gone. I am always so. The
miserable water!" M. Ferraud drew the blanket under his chin.

"When you are better I should like to ask you some questions."

"My friend, you have been very good. I promise to tell you all when
the time comes. It will interest you."

"Breitmann?"

"What makes you think I am interested in Mr. Breitmann?"

Fitzgerald could not exactly tell. "Perhaps I have noticed you
watching him."

"Ah, you have good eyes, Mr. Fitzgerald. Have you observed that I have
been watching you also?"

"Yes. You haven't been quite sure of me." Fitzgerald smiled a little.
"But you may rest your mind. I never break my word."

"Nor do I, my friend. Have patience. Satan take these small boats!"
He stifled a groan.

"A little champagne?"

"Nothing, nothing; thank you."

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