CHAPTER XIV - A SECRET SHARED
“There is so much to tell” I said “that I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps I had better tell you all here, where we are alone and not likely to be disturbed. We have come so fast that we have lots of time and we need not hurry. When you have had your lunch I shall tell you all.”
“Oh please don’t wait till then,” she said, “I am all impatience. Let me know right away.”
“Young woman” I said sternly “you are at present insincere. You know you are ravenously hungry, as you should be after a twenty mile ride; and you are speaking according to your idea of convention and not out of your heart. This is not convention; there is nothing conventional in the whole outfit. Eat the food prepared for you by the thoughtfulness of a very beautiful and charming girl!” She held up a warning finger and said:
“Remember ‘Bon Camarade—without prejudice.’”
“All right” I answered “so it shall be. But if the lady wants to hold me up for criminal libel I shall undertake to repeat the expression when, and where, and how she will. I shall repeat the assertion and abide by the consequences.” She went on eating her sandwiches, not, I thought, displeased. When we had both finished she turned to me and said:
“Now!” I took from my pocket the rescript of Don Bernardino de Escoban’s narrative and handed it to her. She looked at it, turned over the pages, and glanced at them as she went. Then she returned to the beginning, and after reading the first few lines, said to me with an eager look in her eyes:
“Is this really the translation of the secret writing? Oh, I am so glad you have succeeded. You are cute!” She took out her watch, and having looked at it, went on: “We have loads of time. Won’t you read it for me? It will be so much nicer! And let me ask you questions.”
“Delighted!” I answered, “But would it not be better if I read it right through first, and then let you ask questions! Or better still you read it yourself right through, and then ask.” I had a purpose in this. If I had to read it, my eyes must be wholly engrossed in my work; but if she read, I need never take them off her face. I longed to see the varying expression with which she would follow every phase of the strange story. She thought for a few seconds before answering, and as she thought looked me straight in the eyes. I think she read my secret, or at any rate enough of it to fathom my wish; nothing else could account for the gentle blush that spread over her face. Then she said in quite a meek tone:
“I shall read it myself if you think it best!”
I shall never forget that reading. Her face, always expressive, was to me like an open book. I was by this time quite familiar with de Escoban’s narrative, as I had with infinite patience dug it out letter by letter from the cipher in which it had been buried for so long. As also I had written it out fair twice over, it was little wonder that I knew it well. As she read I so followed that I could have told to a sentence how far she had got in the history. Once she unconsciously put her hand to her throat and felt the brooch; but immediately drew it away again, glancing for a moment at me from under her eyelashes to see whether I had observed. She saw I had, shook her head with a smile, and read on.
When she had finished reading, she gave a long sigh and then held out her hand to me saying:
“Bravo! I congratulate you with all my heart!” Her touch thrilled me; she was all on fire, and there was a purposeful look in her face which was outside and beyond any joy that she could have with regard to any success of mine. This struck me so much that I said impulsively:
“Why are you so glad?” She answered instinctively and without thought:
“Because you will keep it from the Spaniards!” Then she stopped suddenly, with a gesture of self repression.
I felt a little piqued. I would have thought that her concern would have been rather individual than political. That in such a matter even before racial hatred would have come gladness at the well-doing of even such a friend—without prejudice—as I was. Looking at me, she seemed to see through me and said
“With her two white hands extended, as if praying one offended:”
“Oh, I am sorry! I did not mean to hurt you. I can’t explain yet; not to-day, which is for comradeship only.—Yes without prejudice”—for she saw my look and answered it “But some day you will understand.” She was so evidently embarrassed and pained at having for some reason which I did not comprehend to show reticence to me who had been so open with her, that I felt it my duty to put her at ease. This I tried to do by assuring her that I quite understood that she had some good reason, and that I was quite content to wait. I could not help adding before I stopped: “This is a small thing to have to wait for after all; when I have to wait for something so much more important.” The warning finger was held up again with a smile.
Then we went over the whole of the narrative again, I reading this time and she stopping to ask me questions. There was not much to ask; all the story was so plain that the proceeding did not take very long. Then she asked me to explain how I had come to decipher the cryptogram. I took out my pocket book and proceeded to make a key to the cipher, explaining as I went on the principle. “To me,” I said, “it is very complete, and can be used in an infinity of ways. Any mode of expression can be used that has two objects with five varieties of each.” Here she interrupted me. As I was explaining I was holding out my hands with the fingers spread as a natural way of expressing my meaning. She saw at once what had escaped me, and clasping her hands exclaimed impulsively:
“Like your two hands! It is delightful! Two hands, and five fingers on each. We can talk a new deaf and dumb alphabet; which no one but ourselves can understand!” Her words thrilled through me. One more secret to share with her; one more secret which would be in perpetual exercise, in pursuance of a common thought. I was about to speak when she stopped me with a gesture. “Sorry!” she said. “Go on; explain to me! We can think of variety later!” So I continued:
“So long as we have means that are suitable, we have only to translate into the biliteral, and we who know this can understand. Thus we have a double guard of secrecy. There are some who could translate into symbols with which they are familiar, symbols with which they are not; but in this method we have a buffer of ignorance or mystery between the known and the unknown. There is also this advantage; the cipher as it stands is sufficiently on a basis of science or at any rate of order, that its key is easily capable of reproduction. As you have seen, I can make a key without any help. Bacon’s biliteral cipher is scientifically accurate. It can, therefore, be easily reproduced; the method of exclusions is also entirely rational, so that we need have no difficulty in remembering it. If two people would take the trouble to learn the symbols of the biliteral, as kept after the exclusions and which are used in this cipher, they might with very little practice be able to write or read off-hand. Indeed the suggestion, which you have just made, of a deaf-and-dumb alphabet is capital. It is as simple as the daylight! You have only to decide whether the thumb or the little finger means 1 or 2; and then reproduce by right hand or left, and using the fingers of each hand, the five symbols of the amended biliteral, and you can talk as well and as easily as do the deaf mutes!” Again she spoke out impulsively:
“Let us both learn off by heart the symbols of our cipher; and then we shan’t want even to make a key. We can talk to each other in a crowd, and no one be the wiser of what we are saying.”
This was very sweet to me. When a man is in love, as I was, anything which links him to his lady, and to her alone, has a charm beyond words. Here was a perpetual link, if we cared to make it so, and if the Fates would be good to us.
“The Fates!” With the thought came back Gormala’s words to me at the beginning. She had told me, and somehow I seemed to have always believed the same, that the Fates worked to their own end and in their own way. Kindness or unkindness had no part in their workings; pity had no place at the beginning of their interest, no more than had remorse at the end. Was it possible that in the scheme of Fate, in which Gormala and I and Lauchlane Macleod had places, there was also a place for Marjory? The Witch-woman had said that the Fates would work their will, though for the doing of it came elements out of past centuries and from the ends of the earth. The cipher of Don de Escoban had lain hidden three centuries, only to be revived at its due time. Marjory had come from a nation which had no existence when the Don had lived, and from a place which in his time was the far home of the red man and the wolf and the bison and the bear.
But yet what was there to connect Marjory with Don de Escoban and his secret? As I thought, I saw Marjory who had turned her back to me, quietly take something from her throat and put it into her pocket. Here was the clue indeed.
The brooch! When I had taken it up from the sea at the Sand Craigs I had returned it to her with only a glance; and as I had often seen it since, without any mystery, I had hardly noticed it. It rushed in on my mind that it was of the same form as that described by Don de Escoban as having been given by the Pope. I had only noticed a big figure and a little one; but surely it could be none other than a figure of St. Christopher. I should have liked to have asked Marjory about it at once; but her words already spoken putting off explanation, and her recent act, of which I was supposed to know nothing, in putting it out of sight, forbade me to inquire. All the more I thought, however; and other matters regarding it crowded into my mind.
The chain was complete, the only weak link being the connection between Marjory and the St. Christopher brooch. And even here there was a mystery, acknowledged in her concealment, which might explain itself when the time came.
Matters took such a grave turn for me with my latest surmise, that I thought it would be well to improve the occasion with Marjory, in so far as it might be possible to learn something of her surroundings. I was barred from asking questions by her own wish; but still I did not like to lose the chance without an effort, so I said to her:
“We have learned a lot to-day, haven’t we?”
“Indeed we have. It hardly seems possible that a day could make such a change!”
“I suppose we should take it that new knowledge should apply new conditions to established fact?” I said this with some diffidence; and I could see that the change in my tone, much against my will, attracted her attention. She evidently understood my wish, for she answered with decision:
“If you mean by ‘new conditions’ any alteration of the compact made between us for to-day—yes, I remember ‘without prejudice’—there is nothing in our new knowledge to alter the old ones. Do remember, sir, that this day is one set apart, and nothing that is not a very grave matter indeed can be allowed to alter what is established regarding it.”
“Then,” said I, “at all events let us learn the cipher—our cipher as you very properly called it.”
“Oh no! surely?” this was said with a rising blush.
“Indeed, yes—I am glad to say!”
“Take care!” she replied, meaningly, then she added:
“Very well! Ours let it be. But really and truly I have no right to its discovery; it makes me feel like a fraud to hear you say so.”
“Be easy,” I replied. “You helped me more than I can say. It was your suggestion to reduce the terms of the biliteral; and it was by that means that I read the cipher. But at any rate when we call it ‘ours’ it will content me if the word ‘ours’”—I could not help repeating the word for it was delight to me; it did not displease her either, though it made her blush—“is applied not to invention but to possession!”
“All right,” she said. “That is good of you. I cannot argue with you. Amendment accepted! Come, let us get on our wheels again. You have the key of our cipher with you; you can tell me the items one by one, and we will learn them as we go along.”
And so as we swept round Davan Lake, with the wind behind us driving us along except just before we regained the high road at Dinnet, I repeated the symbols of the reduced biliteral. We went over and over them again and again, till we were unable to puzzle each other questioning up and down, ‘dodging’ as the school-boys say.
Oh, but that ride was delightful! There was some sort of conscious equality between us which I could see my comrade felt as well as myself. Down the falling road we sped almost without effort, our wheels seeming to glide on air. When we came to the bridge over the railway just above Aboyne, where the river comes north and runs in under a bank of shale and rock, we dismounted and looked back. Behind us was our last view of the gorge above Ballater, where the two round hills stood as portals, and where the cloud rack hanging above and beyond made a mystery which was full of delightful fascination and no less delightful remembrance. Then with a sigh we turned.
There, before us lay a dark alley between the closing pines. No less mysterious, but seemingly dark and grim.
CHAPTER XV - A PECULIAR DINNER-PARTY
We did not stop at Aboyne, but ran on beyond Kincardine O’Neill, and took our second rest close to the Bridge of Potarch where we had tea at the little hotel on the right bank of the river. Then for a while we leaned over the parapet and looked at the water flowing swiftly far below as the river narrows from its pebbly bed to the gorge of rock on which the bridge rests. There is something soothing, perhaps something hypnotic, in the ceaseless rush of water. It unconsciously takes one’s thoughts on and on, till the reality of the present is in some measure lost and the mind wanders towards imagination through the regions of the unknown. As I looked at Marjory, with the afternoon sun falling on her superb figure and showing up her clear-cut profile with all the finish of a cameo, I could not but be struck with the union of gentleness and independence which was so clearly manifested in her. Without thinking, I spoke out my mind. It is a privilege of those who understand each other, or of the very young, to give voice to the latter portion of a train of thought without feeling it necessary to enlighten the hearer as to what has gone to make up the conclusion. The feeling was hourly growing upon me that, even if I could not quite understand Marjory, at least she understood me.
“But then all you American girls are so independent!” She did not seem a bit surprised by this fag end of reasoning; she had evidently been following up some train of thought of her own, and by some happy instinct my words fitted in with it. Without turning towards me, but still keeping her eyes fixed down the stream to where far away it swayed to the right through a gap between pine clad hills she answered:
“Yes! We are as a rule brought up to be independent. It seems to be a part of what our people call the ‘genius’ of the country. Indeed for many, women as well as men, it is a sort of necessity. Our nation is so vast, and it expands so quickly, that there is nearly everywhere a family separation. In the main, all the children of one generation become the heads of families of the next. Somehow, the bulk of our young people still follow the sunset; and in the new life which comes to each, whether in the fields or in the city or in the reclamation of the wilderness, the one thing which makes life endurable is this independence which is another form of self-reliance. This it is which enables them to brave hunger and thirst and all danger which comes to pioneers; which in the cities makes the solitude of lonely life bearable to the young as well as to the old; which makes them work and study in patience; which makes them self-sacrificing, and thrifty, and long enduring. I tell you it is this which makes a race of patriots, whose voices swell in unison till the great voice of the nation, raised in some good cause, can ring and echo through the world!” As she spoke she got more and more earnest, more and more enthusiastic, till her voice began to vibrate and her face to flush. When she turned towards me at the end, her eyes were full of spiritual light. I looked at her, and I suppose my love as well as my admiration must have expressed itself, for her eyes fell and the flush on her face melted into a soft blush. She turned, looked at the water again, and then went on speaking:
“This is the good side of our independence and faute de mieux it serves; those who know no better do not miss what might be. But oh! it has to be paid for. The little sufferings of day by day can grow into a mass which in the end outweighs those seemingly far greater ills which manifest themselves all at once. No one knows, no one ever will know, how much quiet, dull pain goes to tame a woman’s heart to the solitude of life. I have not seen so much of it as some others; my life has been laid in pleasant places, and only through the small accidents of life have I come to know of the negative pain which other girls have to endure. It is so much to have round one the familiar faces of our youth; to meet sympathy at every turn of life, and to know that there is understanding for us always. We women have to give something in order to be happy. The stronger-minded ones, as we call them, blame the Creator for this disposition of things—or else I do not know who or what they blame; but the rest of us, who are wise enough to accept what cannot be altered, try to realise what can be done for the best. We all want to care for some one or something, if it is only a cat or a dog. For myself, so far back as I can remember, I longed to have a brother or sister, but I think that in my secret heart it was a brother I wanted. Of course as I merged into my actual surroundings I grew out of this; but once it was brought home to me with new force. We were staying for a few days in one of those great English houses where there was a growing family of boys and girls. There was one sweet young girl, just about my own age, who seemed idolised by all her brothers. When we arrived they were all going in to evening prayers. The last of the sunlight was falling through the old stained glass window of the great baronial hall, and lit up the little family group. The girl sat between two of her young brothers, great stalwart lads who had all the characteristics of a family of soldiers. During prayers each of them held one of her hands; and when they all knelt, her arms went round their necks. I could not help feeling deeply—down into the very depths of my soul—how good it was for them all. I would have given everything I have, or am ever likely to have, that mine had been such an upbringing. Think, how in after years it will come back to those boys in hours of trial, or pain, or prosperity, or passion; in all times when their manhood or their honour or their worth is to be tried; how they will remember the words which were spoken to them as those were spoken, and were listened to as those were listened to, in the midst of sympathy and love. Many and many a time in years to come those boys will bless such hours, and God Himself will surely rejoice that His will was being wrought in so sweet a way. And the same thing is going on in a thousand English homes!” She paused and turned to me and the feeling in her heart found expression in the silent tears that ran down her cheeks. Again she turned her eyes to the running water and gazed awhile before speaking again. Then looking at me, she went on:
“And the girl, too, how good it was for her! What an antidote to selfishness! How much of self-control, of sympathy, of love, of toleration was begun and fostered and completed in those moments of the expression of her heart! What place can there really be for selfish want and sorrows in the heart of a woman so trained to sympathise with and help others? It is good! good! good! and I pray that in the later development of my own dear country, all such things may have a part. Expansion at its present rate must soon cease; and then some predominant idea must take the place of the eternal self-independence. We shall, I trust, moult no feather of our national feeling of personal duty; but I am sure that our people, and more especially our women, will lead happier as well as healthier lives.”
This present phase of Marjory’s character was new to me, fresh and enchanting. Every hour seemed to bring out new worths and beauties of the girl’s character, of her intellectual gifts, of the endless wealth of her heart.
When she ceased speaking I took her hand in mine, she not resenting, and kissed it. I said only one word “Marjory!” but it was enough. I could see that in her eyes which made my heart leap.
Then a new life seemed to come to both of us. With one accord we moved towards our bicycles, and mounted in silence. After a few minutes of rapid spin down the sloping road from the bridge, we began to chat again gaily. For myself I was in wildly joyous spirits. Even a self-doubting lover could not fail to understand such a look in his mistress’s eyes. If ever love spoke out in eloquent silence it was then, all doubt melted from my heart, as the night shadows pale before the dawn. I was content to wait now, illimitably and in silence. She, too, seemed altogether happy, and accepted in unquestioning faith all the little pleasures which came in the progress of our journey. And such pleasures are many. As we drew down the valley of the Dee, with the mountains falling back and the dark pinewoods running up them like tongues of flame and emphasising by their gloom the brightness of grass and heather which cropped up amongst the rocks beyond, every turn of the road brought us to some new scene of peaceful beauty. From under the splendid woods of Crathes Castle we saw the river running like a blue ribbon far to the east and on either side of it fields and gardens and woods spreading wide. On we sped with delight in every moment, till at last through miles of shady woods we came to the great stone bridge, and ended our jaunt over the rough granite cobblestones of Aberdeen.
We were a little before the time the train was due; so leaving our wheels in the Palace Hotel we went down on the platform to meet Mrs. Jack on her arrival.
We met her in due course, and brought her up to the hotel. At the stairway Marjory, who had lingered half a flight behind her companion, whispered to me:
“You have been a good boy to-day, a real good boy; and you shall before long have your reward.” As she gave me her hand, I whispered:
“I am content to wait now Marjory; dear Marjory!” She blushed and smiled, and fled upstairs with a warning finger laid upon her lips.
It had been understood that I was to dine with Mrs. Jack and her friend, so I went up to the room which I had secured, to change my clothes. When I came down, in what I thought was a reasonable time, I went to the private sitting-room and knocked. As there was no answer I knocked again; then receiving no reply I took it for granted that the ladies had not yet come from their rooms and entered.
The room was empty but on the table which was laid for dinner for three was a note in Marjory’s hand directed to me. With a sinking of the heart I opened it, and stood for a few minutes amazed. It had no apostrophe and ran as follows:—
“We have had to leave suddenly, but Mrs. Jack wants you to oblige her very much if you will be so good. Stay in the room, and when dinner is served sit down by yourself and eat it. Please, please do not think hardly of Mrs. Jack’s request; and do not fail to carry it out. There is good reason for it, as you will very soon know. More depends on your doing as Mrs. Jack”—the “Mrs. Jack” was written over an obliterated “I”—“asks than you may think. I am sure that by this time you know you can trust me.
“Marjory.”
The situation was disappointing and both humiliating and embarrassing. To be a guest under such conditions was almost ridiculous; and under ordinary circumstances I should have refused. But then I remembered that last look of Marjory’s eyes at the bridge of Potarch! Without a word, or another thought, of revolt I sat down to the dinner which the waiter was just now bringing into the room.
As it was evident to me that my staying in the room was for some purpose of delay, I lingered over my wine and had two cigars before I came away.
CHAPTER XVI - REVELATIONS
In the hall I met together two men whom I knew well. The first was Adams of the American Embassy in London; the second Cathcart of the British Embassy at Washington, now on leave. I had not seen either for two years, and it was with mutual pleasure that we met. After our preliminary handshaking, and the inevitable drink at the American’s request, Adams slapped me on the shoulder and said heartily:
“Well, old fellow, I congratulate you; or rather am I to congratulate you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked in feeble embarrassment.
“All right, old chap!” he said heartily. “Your blush is enough. I see it hasn’t come off yet at all events!” A man never lets well alone when he is in an awkward position. If I had only held my tongue I might not have made a guy of myself; but as I was in doubt as to what might be the issue of my suit to Marjory, I felt additionally constrained to affect ignorance of his meaning. So I floundered on:
“‘Come off yet’? What on earth do you mean?” Again he slapped me on the back as he said in his chaffing way:
“My dear boy I saw you come in over the bridge. You had had a long ride I could see by your wheels; and I am bound to say that you did seem on excellent terms with each other!” This was getting dangerous ground, so I tried to sheer off. “Oh,” I said, “you mean my bike ride with Miss Anita”—I was interrupted by his sudden whistle.
“Oh,” he said in exact imitation of my own manner. “You mean Miss Anita! So it has come to that already! Anyhow I congratulate you heartily, whether it has come, or may come, or will come to anything else.”
“I don’t see,” I said, with a helpless feeling of having been driven into a corner, “that there is anything especially remarkable in a man having a bicycle ride with a young lady of his acquaintance.”
“Keep your hair on, old man!” he said with a smile. “There is nothing remarkable about a man riding with a young lady; but there is something very remarkable about any man riding with this particular young lady. Why, man alive, don’t you know that there isn’t a man in America, or out of it, that wouldn’t give the eyes out of his head to take your place on such an occasion. To ride alone with Marjory Drake—”
“With whom?” I said impulsively; and having spoken could have bitten out my tongue. Adams paused; he was silent so long that I began to grow uneasy. His face grew very grave, and there spread over it that look between cunning and dominance which was his official expression. Then he spoke, but his words had not the same careless ring in them. There was a manifest caution and a certain indefinable sense of distance.
“Look here, Archie Hunter! Is it possible that you don’t know who it is that you were with. All right! I know of course that you are acquainted with her personally,” for he saw I was about to protest, “the very fact of your being with her and your knowing the name that she seldom uses answer for that; and you may take it from me that the lady needs no character for discretion from me. But how is it that you are on such good terms with her, and yet don’t seem even to know her name?” For fully a minute there was silence between us. Cathcart had as yet said not a word, and Adams was thinking. For myself I was in a sea of multitudinous concerns; whichever way I turned I was face to face with some new difficulty. It would not do to leave these men under the impression that there was any social irregularity in my friendship with Marjory; I was too jealous of her good name to allow such a thing to be possible. And yet I could not explain at length how we had come to be such good friends. Already there were so many little mysteries; right up to this very evening when she and Mrs. Jack had gone away so strangely, leaving me in the ridiculous position of a guest with no host. It was not easy to explain these things; it was impossible to avoid them. In the midst of this chaotic whirl of thoughts Adams spoke:
“I think I had better say no more, anyhow. After all, if Miss Drake chooses to keep a secret, or to make one, it is not my business to give it, or her, away. She knows what she’s doing. You will excuse me, old fellow, won’t you; but as it is manifestly a lady’s wish, I think I can do best by holding my tongue.”
“Any wish of that lady’s,” said I, and I felt that I must seem to speak grandiloquently, “can only have my most loyal support.”
There was an awkward silence which was relieved by Cathcart, who said to me:
“Come up to my room, Archie; I want to tell you something. You’ll join us, too, Sam, won’t you?”
“All right, Billy,” said Adams, “I’ll come in a few minutes. I want to give some directions about a horse for to-morrow.”
When we were in Cathcart’s room, he closed the door and said to me with the most genuine good feeling:
“I didn’t like to say a word downstairs, old chap; but I could see you were in some difficulty. Of course I know it’s all right; but ought you not to know something of the lady? With any one else but Sam and myself such a thing might have conveyed a false impression. Surely you can best protect the lady by knowing how to avoid anything that might embarrass her!” This was all good sound common sense. For a moment I weighed up the matter against the possibility of Marjory’s wishing to keep her name a secret. Looking back, however, I could see that any concealment that had been was rather positive than negative. The original error had been mine; she had simply allowed it to pass. The whole thing had probably been the passing fancy of a bright, spirited young girl; to take it too seriously, or to make too much of it might do harm. Why, even these men might, were I to regard it as important, take it as some piece of deliberate deceit on her part. Thus convinced of the wisdom of Cathcart’s proposition I spoke:
“You are quite right! and I shall be much obliged if you will—if you will enlighten me.” He bowed and smiled, and went on genially:
“The lady you called Miss Anita, you so far called quite correctly. Her name is Anita; but it is only her second Christian name. She is known to the world as Miss Marjory Drake, of Chicago.”
“Known to the world.” Was this a mere phrase, or the simple expression of a fact! I asked directly:
“How known to the world? Do you mean that is the name known amongst her circle of acquaintances? Is—is there any cause why the great world outside that circle should know her at all?” He smiled and laid his hand on my shoulder in a very brotherly way as he answered:
“Yes, old fellow. There is a reason, and a good one, why the great world should know her. I see you are all in the dark; so I had better tell you what I know. Marjory Anita Drake is an heiress, a great heiress, a very great heiress; perhaps a long way the greatest heiress in America, or out of it. Her father, who died when she was a baby, left her a gigantic fortune; and her trustees have multiplied it over and over again.” He paused; so I said—it seeming necessary to say something:
“But being an heiress is not sufficient reason why a girl should be known to the world.”
“It is a pretty good one. Most people wouldn’t want any better. But this is not the reason in her case. She is the girl who gave the battle ship to the American Government!”
“Gave the battle ship! I don’t understand!”
“It was this way. At the time the reports kept crowding in of the Spanish atrocities on the reconcentrados; when public feeling was rising in the United States, this girl got all on fire to free Cuba. To this end she bought a battle ship that the Cramp’s had built for Japan. She had the ship armed with Krupp cannon which she bought through friends in Italy; and went along the Eastern coast amongst the sailors and fishermen till she had recruited a crew. Then she handed the whole thing over to the Government as a spur to it to take some action. The ship is officered with men from the Naval Academy at Annapolis; and they tell me there isn’t one of the crew—from the cabin boy to the captain—that wouldn’t die for the girl to-morrow.”
“Bravo!” I said instinctively! “That’s a girl for a nation to be proud of!”
“She is all that!” said Cathcart enthusiastically. “Now you can understand why Adams congratulated you; and why he was so surprised when you did not seem to know who she was.” I stood for a moment thinking, and all the clouds which wrapped Marjory’s purpose in mystery seemed to disperse. This, then, was why she allowed the error of her name to pass. She had not made an incognita; chance had done this for her, and she had simply accepted it. Doubtless, wearied with praise and with publicity and notoriety in all its popular forms, she was glad to get away and hide herself for a while. Fortune had thrown in her way a man who was manifestly ignorant of her very existence; and it was a pleasure to play with him at hide-and-seek!
It was, after all, an up-to-date story of the Princess in disguise; and I was the young man, all unknowing, with whom she had played.
Here a terrible doubt assailed me. Other Princesses had played hide-and-seek; and, having had their sport, had vanished; leaving desolation and an empty heart behind them. Was it possible that she too was like this; that she had been all the while playing with me; that even whilst she was being most gracious, she was taking steps to hide even her whereabouts from me? Here was I, who had even proposed marriage; and yet who did not even know when or where I should see her again—if indeed I should ever see her again at all. I could not believe it. I had looked into her eyes, and had seen the truth. Here was no wanton playing at bowls with men’s hearts. My life upon her faith!
I seemed to have lost myself in a sort of trance. I was recalled from it by Cathcart, who seeing me in a reverie had gone over to the fireplace and stood with his back to me, filling his pipe at the mantel-piece:
“I think I hear Adams coming. Pardon me, old fellow, but though I am sure he knows I have told you about Miss Drake, and though he probably made an excuse for delay so that I might have an opportunity to do so, he wants to appear not to enter on the subject. He is diplomat all over. Remember he is of the U. S. Embassy; and Miss Drake, as an American citizen, is theoretically under his care in this foreign country. Let us be talking of something else when he comes in!” Sam came along the passage softly whistling a bar of “Yankee Doodle.” Cathcart nodded to me and whispered:
“I told you so! He takes good care that he may not surprise us.” When he came in we were talking of the prospects of the Autumn fishing on the Dee.
When we left Cathcart’s room, after a cigar, I, being somewhat tired with my long ride, went at once to my room. Adams came with me as far as the door.
I was just getting into bed when I heard a slight tap at the door. I unlocked it and found Adams without. He raised a warning hand, and said in a whisper:
“May I come in? I want to say something very privately.” More than ever mystified—everything seemed a mystery now—I opened the door. He came in and I closed it softly and locked it.
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