The fast German mail steamer,Elbe—which every one knows was responding to an unexplained false call from theWellington—took off the passengers from the burningCumberland; and, as the crew of theCumberlandremained to fight the fire, theElbestood by till theCorinthiancame back from its useless chase. As theCorinthianwas a British ship of an allied line, it stayed with theCumberland, and finally brought it into port after the fire had gutted the ship and burned out. Accordingly, theElbe, with theCumberland’spassengers, reached New York on Saturday afternoon, while theCorinthianwas still at sea.
The arrest at New York of Roberta Leigh for her high crimes committed in England therefore was postponed till theCorinthiandocked. But this arrest was meant to be only postponed. The British government, thoroughly aroused to the need of decisive and drastic measures for the suppression of the suffragist outrages, were determined to show no quarter. The crown officers waited doggedly for the coming of theCorinthianon Monday.
Wherefore, on Sunday night, Mr. Andrew Farnham called on Miss Roberta Leigh at the quiet country place of one of her classmates up the Hudson.
“Bobs,” he said, when he was alone with her, “the Britishers are in for bitter disappointment when theCorinthiangets to quarantine to-morrow. They’ve been oiling up the thumbscrews in the tower and sharpening the spikes of the Iron Maiden for you. When they find they haven’t got you, our recent acts of evasion will be kindergarten games compared to what may be required to keep you from being extradited. And, to confess the truth, dear, this having all but slaughtered a shipload of people has scared me. I don’t know what I’d find myself doing if they got after you again. So, just to protect me, won’t you marry me now? Come on; let’s become woman and husband!”
Roberta kissed him and laughed. “You didn’t really hurt any one. Everybody got off theCumberland, and theCorinthiancouldn’t have put out the fire even if it had come right away. I didn’t hurt anybody in England; and, as for their precious old property, I told my lawyer this morning to pay what was right for that.”
“You did that? Why?”
“I didn’t do those things for votes for women I’d never seen. I—I did them because you made me so mad, and I wanted to show you I didn’t care a thing about you.”
“Why?”
“Because I did—and thought you didn’t really care for me.”
“But now?”
“I know.”
“Then give me another kiss, Bobs. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you over the garden gate and you dared me. Why did you do that?”
“Because I knew I was going to love you, I guess, and tried to deny it.”
He held her close a long time, and their kisses no longer could be counted. “Dear, what a dangerous thing is the mating impulse!”
“Yes; if you try to deny it.”
“Then we’re stopping that right now, aren’t we?”
“Right now!”
Wherefore upon the passenger list of the steamer for Brazil which sailed from New York next morning appeared the names of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Farnham in the royal suite. By wireless, as they sailed out to sea, they heard of the horror of the British government at finding that the girl on theCorinthianwas not Roberta Leigh, and that the very militant suffragette again had escaped.
But, in equal sense of outrage, the suffragist leaders in England received the news that Roberta Leigh had paid for all damage done by her in the name of the suffrage cause.
“We have long suspected,” the chief starver for the suffrage cause was quoted in the newspapers, “the sincerity of the suffragist support from the young women of America. Miss Leigh has proved by this weak reparation that her acts here were performed without sense of conviction. It is such as she who seem to justify, to the thoughtless, the charge that there is nothing new in principle in our attitude toward men. Her traitorous repairing of damage which we supposed was done in good faith will certainly cause us to be more certain of the sincerity and conviction of other recruits in our ranks before intrusting them with important acts of destruction. The rumored marriage of Miss Leigh is, under the circumstances, perfectly comprehensible, and only a final evidence of her defection.”
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 15, 1914 issue ofThe Popular Magazine.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 15, 1914 issue ofThe Popular Magazine.