THE next morning Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew assembled on the main deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and leaned over the rail like a candidate ready to make a stump speech. But, unlike a candidate, he had two revolvers strapped to his waist and in plain sight.
“I have a few words to say to you critters down there,” he began. “I know all about what you have been planning to do. I have watched you peeking and spying around this morning for them boxes. Well, you won’t find them. Them boxes are a good way off.” He pointed a stubby finger down at the Russian Finn. “You come up here!” he commanded. The Finn turned pale and shook his head.
“You come up here and I’ll promise that you won’t be hurt. I want you to take back a report to that gang of yours. If you don’t obey a master’s orders and come up here,” continued the captain, pulling a gun, “it will be mutiny—and I know how to deal with mutiny. I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
After a little hesitation the Finn climbed the ladder. The captain led him into the wheel-house, into all the state-rooms, and took him on a genera! tour of inspection of the upper deck.
“Now you can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any gold up here to mutiny about. You go back and tell that gang what you have seen—or, rather, what you didn’t see.” He pushed the Finn to the ladder.
“I give you all liberty to hunt over the lower part of the steamer from forepeak to rudder,” declared the captain over the rail. “You can help yourselves to all the gold you find. But I can tell you that there ain’t an ounce aboard here. That gold is stored where you can’t get it.” He swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the horizon. “If you act like men from now on until this cruise is over, you’ll be paid like lords. If you hanker for mutiny, start in and mutiny. Them who live through it will never get a cent; them who are killed can’t use gold where they will fetch up; it will be too hot to handle!” The men fell to muttering among themselves, but I could see that they had been cowed. The report of the leader made them still more melancholy. They divided at last—the blacks from the whites—and went about their tasks.
“I want to say, Sidney, that you showed good judgment,” said the captain, as he went to his state-room. “But I don’t feel like giving three cheers—not while that gold is back on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”
Well, there was gold to the value of about a million yonder on the bottom in that wreck of theGolden Gate, but I had no appetite for more gold just then. I knew that I had reached the limit of my strength and courage. I had won more than two millions from the greed of that miserly ocean, and had given it back again in order to make another fight against the greed of men.
I sat on deck and endured the pains of my tortured body, and waited for the inevitable when it should come down over the horizon from the north. Half a dozen anxious days dragged past—and then it came!
A trail of blacksmoke signaled it—they were using lots of coal and were in a hurry, as that banner of black indicated. Framed in Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, it took form as a big ocean tug. She seemed to leap angrily across the sea as the surges rolled under her, and the bows churned up white yeast.
There was no hesitation in the manner in which she came on. She bore down on us with a speed which seemed to say, “Here we come to take our own!”
We counted at least a score of men aboard, using our glass. And when the tug slowed off our quarter we saw that most of the men held rifles in the hook of their arms.
“It’s what I have been expecting,” I told the captain. “They have come down here proposing to treat us as pirates. How would you feel right now with gold aboard here?”
Captain Holstrom wagged his head mournfully, and seemed to lack words with which to express his feelings.
“We are going to make fast to you,” bawled a man, with a voice like a fog-horn. “Mind how you perform.”
That was a reckless performance even for a tug in that sea, but they rigged a row of fenders and put her alongside with much clanging of bell. A dozen men leaped on board theZizania. Some were guards who carried rifles. There were three men who seemed of importance. I spied Marcena Keedy on the upper deck of the tug, holding to the funnel stays. He did not venture to come on board us with the others.
“Let them do the talking,” I whispered to Captain Holstrom as the three were climbing the ladder. “Just stand on your dignity as master of this steamer.” And the captain did so in a way that highly satisfied me. He chewed a toothpick and displayed much indifference.
“I bid you welcome, gents!” he informed them, stiffly. “And you can see that I ain’t looking for trouble—otherwise I might have a few words to say about your way of boarding this steamer. If it’s ignorance of rules and etiquette, I’ll overlook it.”
“It’s business, Captain Holstrom,” snapped the spokesman, a chap who wore a hard hat and looked as though he had just closed a desk in an office. “We are from San Francisco, and represent the underwriters in the matter of theGolden Gate.”
“Step into the wheel-house—it’s my office,” stated the captain. He pointed to the muzzle of the first rifle, rising over the edge of the upper deck. “If those fellows come up here I shall consider it an insult to me as a peaceful man and master of this vessel.”
The man hesitated.
“We’re no pirates,” remarked Captain Holstrom.
The man gave orders to the gunmen to remain below.
“If you are not pirates,” he said, when we were assembled in the wheel-house, “you can show it by turning over to us the gold you’ve dug out of the wreck over yonder.”
The spokesman was a rather excitable fellow. He began to tap his finger on the captain’s breast. He showed documents with seals and all the other law-shark trimmings.
“You have no right to come here and operate. Have you got attorney’s powers? Have you got anything in the way of permits? No, you haven’t. That gold belongs to other people. Give it up and save trouble.”
Captain Holstrom threw a sort of helpless look at me, stifling some emotion. I realized that he was at the end of his dignity and that in about ten seconds he would begin to use his talents in the line of profanity.
“Excuse me if I say a word here,” I broke in. “I am a partner in this enterprise.”
“You’re using a polite word for this kind of a job,” sneered the man.
“You may represent the underwriters,” I said, “but to all intents and purposes the underwriters had abandoned the treasure.”
“We shall take our gold, my friend!”
“Rights or no rights?”
“You have made it a grab game, and we’re in on the grab!” He was mighty overbearing and offensive. Law was behind him, a fortune was concerned, and he was showing the usual spirit of the greedy world.
“You have full powers in this matter so far as the underwriters are concerned, have you?” I asked.
“Absolute.” He waved his papers under my nose. “Issued due and regular by the court and the United States.”
“But don’t you realize that you are not in the United States, sir?”
“There’s got to be more or less dog eat dog in this game. We happen to have the cards. If you don’t hand over that gold, we shall put a crew on board this steamer, guard it with rifles, and set this boat into waters where we have jurisdiction. I’ll be frank to say that then we can beat you in court in the lying game, because we start with law behind us, and you’re handicapped. I say this to show you that you’d better fork over.”
I was holding my temper. For the sake of my own conscience in this affair, I wanted the other side to lay all their cards on the table; in their insolence and confidence, they seemed inclined to do so, for their plain intent was to intimidate us.
“What do we get out of it for ourselves?” I inquired, meekly.
“Remember that you came down here on the sly, thinking you were going to get away with the whole thing. It hasn’t been your fault that you haven’t. I think that we can promise to keep you out of the penitentiary if you act sensible. I’m not making any rash promises.”
There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they thought they had the upper hand on us!
I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of much gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs in a man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the men who would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success to the best man!
I looked at that fellow—at his white hands and his flabbiness—a man who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had given me his code. I told him as much.
“And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on.
I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet. I showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the shirt from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh.
“You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!”
I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they began to hunt theZizaniaover. And I heard what Captain Holstrom said to them after they had finished.
“Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on myZizaniathat belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want to remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat and cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men who can fight—and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a ball through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.”
They went silently and grudgingly—but they went. I enjoyed the expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out on the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a little distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of war that started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the holding-ground.
A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking men were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The spokesman shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in threats. In order to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at all interested in their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on them, and after a time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned to the tug.
They kept up those tactics for most of a week. They were certainly stubborn and insolent persons, and they were fighting for big money. But the more they raved and threatened, the more at peace with myself and my conscience I felt. We were fighting for our own now, and they had established the code.
Then at last the boat came with a white flag. The spokesman politely stated that they had come to talk some business in private, and begged to be allowed to come on board.
Miss Kama was with me on deck when they climbed up the ladder. She had resumed her woman’s garb, and they stared at her in frank astonishment and admiration. She did look particularly sweet, her little cap on her curls, her sweater displaying her winsome curves of beauty.
She seemed to astonish them, I say. The next moment she astonishedme. She walked into the wheel-house by my side, and was the first to speak.
“Gentlemen,” she said to the three, “you have seen with your own eyes how this poor boy has suffered. You can’t see how I have suffered as I have watched him do what he has done, but the marks are on my soul, I know. There is law in the world, and all that, and men are too apt to get angry in law when there is much money concerned. Can’t you all keep from being angry to-day, and be wise, and decide on what is right?”
They looked at one another and the spokesman stammered something about being over there to have a heart-to-heart talk.
“May I not stay?” she asked, wistfully. “I won’t say a word to bother you—I won’t move unless you start to quarrel—and then I’ll only remind you that there’s a lady present.” The queer little smile she gave them started the grins on their faces. The ice was broken.
Those men were human once more. The girl had given the magic touch to the conference.
We had not been getting anywhere at all, in the past, and we woke up and realized it as we stood there with the girl’s presence toning us down. It had been man’s bluff and bluster; they had arrived ready mad and I felt that I knew what ailed them outside of the mere money part of the thing.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for Marcena Keedy’s tongue you would have shown a better side to us when you arrived here.” Nobody seemed ready to say anything for a moment and I went on. “I reckon he told, you that he was our partner and that we have cheated him.”
“He had quite a story to tell when he reported the matter to the underwriters,” admitted the lawyer.
“After you sized him up, you naturally decided that men who could cheat Keedy must be the champion renegades of the Pacific coast! I can’t blame you much for the way you came banging up against us. I don’t know what else he has said to our prejudice, and I don’t care. Now that you are here with us, face to face, and we’re down on a real man-basis, we don’t need to paw over what a liar has said. I want you to call that man Keedy on to theZizania, even though he poisons the air. What I have to say I’ll say in his hearing.”
I’m pretty sure that Keedy did not relish making that call, but the men who went after him brought him. He had a gambler’s face and nerve and he put on his best front; he even disregarded Miss Kama’s presence and lighted a cigar to appear more at ease, and I plucked it from between his jaws and flung it out of the window.
“I want the floor for only a few moments, gentlemen,”
I told the group. “I’m going to tell you how this expedition was organized, how this person Keedy fitted in; and what happened.” And I did tell them.
It was necessary for the lawyer to appoint Capt. Rask Holstrom as special guard to keep Keedy’s mouth shut while I talked, but the rules of a court-room prevailed after that.
“I’ll admit, gentlemen,” I said when I had finished my little story, “that we have acted like children so far as the legal side of this thing goes. But it seemed only a crazy scheme at best when we started out—I couldn’t feel that I was dealing with any reality. After we arrived here we did the best we could, and we have been too busy to study up law. But I want to say that Captain Holstrom and I are not thieves by nature. I’ll show you a thief, however. There he stands!” I pointed to Keedy. “He stole from us a box of bullion worth twenty thousand dollars. I know that he recovered two more boxes. Now that you are proposing to handle this matter man-fashion, Captain Holstrom and I stand ready to give to owners what is fairly their own. I advise you to ask Keedy what he proposes to do!” The lawyer asked him in mighty prompt fashion.
“Up to date nobody seems to be making any showdown except in talk,” said Mr. Keedy. “I’ll cash in conversation just as far as anybody.”
“But how does it happen, Keedy, that when you gave us your other information you did not say that you had any of the gold in your hands?” asked the lawyer.
He scowled and did not answer.
“If these men turn their bullion over on a square lay, are you prepared to do the same?”
“I’ll talk business after I have seen them turn it over.”
“That’s a rather queer attitude for you to take, Keedy, after your talk to the underwriters and to me.”
But the renegade did not show any inclination to come across with anything definite.
I knew well enough that he could not. His try with those divers had cost high and it was safe to presume that he had realized on every ounce of the bullion his men had recovered and had planted the money. My rancor was deep and I walked up to him and declared my belief.
“You understand, Keedy, that you must produce the bullion or its value in money or our bargain doesn’t stand,” said the lawyer.
I did not need that declaration to be assured that the villain had sold us without regard to our rights or our safety. And sudden fervor and determination thrilled through and through me. I proposed to show those men from San Francisco the difference between Marcena Keedy and the partners on whom he had pasted his dirty label. Mere talk was not as convincing proof as I desired. I had already made an investment of my best strength and all my courage and I had much to show. But I felt that if those men could see with their own eyes what that investment signified in the way of human endurance, they would meet me in more generous spirit when we came to make our bargain.
Up to then the legal papers had only been waved under my nose in threatening manner. I asked permission to examine them, and the lawyer was very obliging. They were all-embracing, even to granting powers of attorney to the underwriters’ agents to handle the matter in all its aspects.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m going down after the rest of that gold, and every box will be put into your hands as it comes up.”
I got a glimpse at the girl’s face, but I did not dare to look into her eyes. Her cheeks were white, and she was gasping protests which nobody heeded, for those men were listening to something which filled their ears just then:
“And after you see how I am bucking hell for your sakes, well, then we shall see what you have to say to me—man to man!”
IF what I have just written sounds as if I wanted to pose as a hero of melodrama, I have produced a wrong impression. I was playing a big game and I was using all the hard, cold and calculating wit I possessed. As I have said, I proposed to operate on human nature. After all, I was in no position to demand anything from those men, in spite of the bluff we were making in regard to the treasure we had recovered and concealed. I had a healthy fear of what the courts might do to us in a case where stolen property had been hidden. It was up to me to cultivate a spirit of generosity in them—and that was why I went down again, though every nerve and fiber in my racked body made protest. But I went down under better conditions.
The tug had powerful pumps and a considerable quantity of good hose. She was manageable in shoal water, and by means of her hawsers and well-set kedges we were able to swing her in, for the day’s work, fairly close to the wreck.
There is no need of further dwelling on details—and it would be necessary to supply the details by somebody’s word of mouth—somebody who watched me, for I don’t remember much of what happened. I was a lunatic, I suppose; my human machinery was operated by a single mania. As I look back I am unable to separate the nightmare from the reality with any amount of clarity. Therefore, we’ll allow all that to hang in limbo, seeing that this is a plain yam and not a study of psychology.
However, I can remember flashes through the dark curtain, and of a few of these I will make mention, for they have a bearing on the tale.
There was a period when I was in the mood for babbling. I could feel my dry tongue clacking away inside my jaws like a clapper in a wooden box and wholly beyond my control. That tongue was telling all my story about my love and longing and ambition in my boyhood days—telling the story to somebody who patted my cheek and crooned sympathy—somebody who did not annoy me by dispute when I said that I would never live to see Levant again—somebody who promised to carry there the three rings and tell my story and fulfil my requests. It was a dream full of agony for me—rather it may be called a dreaming reality. I wanted to stop that clacking tongue. I wasn’t operating it. It was telling a lot of truth which I did not want published. It was putting me in wrong, I felt, just as if some enemy were tattling about me. It was mine and I hated it furiously for what seemed to be betrayal of me. I wasn’t standing for what the tongue said.
Then there was a period when I forgave the tongue many of its past offenses, because, at last, it did good service for me in man-talk to men. It was steady and convincing and I was conscious that it had helped me to win in some big matter. Then, later, there was a time when there were shots and shoutings and dismal trouble of some sort. And, last of all, in the blurred imaginings, mixed with the real, came the long-drawn-out, misty, groping, wondering consciousness that I was out of strife and trouble and agony. But I could not come out of the shadow—I knew that many days and nights came and went while I was trying to grasp something which I could know was reality.
I was dreaming that I was back in my old room in Dodovah Vose’s tavern, and that dream seemed to last for days. Then all at once I woke up and I was truly in that room.
By the open window sat Capt. Rask Holstrom and he was junking up a Red Astrachan apple with his jackknife. He poised a cube of the fruit on the tip of the blade; looked me square in the eyes, and asked, in a matter-of-fact way, if I was feeling more like myself that day.
There was no doubt about my being in Dodovah Vose’s tavern! I made sure before I opened my mouth. There was the old quaint smell of the place, and I could always trust my nose. For my ears there was the whining squeak of the windmill pump in the stable-yard. I touched the irregular seams of the silk crazy-quilt, and, to delight my eyes, the brass handles of the ancient high-boy in the corner blinked back the radiance of the afternoon sunlight. All my senses were satisfied, for I could almost taste, as the breeze flicked my lips, the savor of fried chicken which came floating in through the window. And after my senses told me what they did, I felt at ease and dismissed all the shadows and imaginings. Never did a man come back to his right balance of mind in more commonplace fashion.
I decided to be just as matter-of-fact as Captain Rask. I told him I felt pretty fair. Parts of my hands were bandaged and I was aware that my feet were tied up.
“Have another apple?”
So I had been eating apples from Dodovah Vose’s orchard! I used to steal from his trees—especially the early-autumn fruit. I must have been giving the impression that I was pretty nigh all right, even though the kink in my brain had kept me on the side-track so far as I was concerned, personally.
The captain junked an apple into quarters, pared them, and gave me the fruit. I think Eve tempted Adam with a Red Astrachan!
The captain sat and rocked and munched. Confound his old pelt, why didn’t he start in and tell me what had happened?
He clacked his knife shut after a time and yawned.
“So, as I was telling you before you had your nap, Kama and I may as well move on. There isn’t much more that’s sensible we can do for you.” I wondered just what theyhaddone!
“Where is Kama?” I called her “Kama” quite naturally; it seemed to me that my clattering tongue had been that familiar for a long time.
“Oh, I guess she’s just resting up a little in her room. She is bound to be nursing you most of the time, though you don’t need so much attention, so far as I can see. Do you know, Ross, in spite of what you and I were saying to each other yesterday, that girl o’ mine still insists that your mind isn’t right, and that you’re off the hooks. She says there’s something that hasn’t come back to you!”
God bless that girl’s intuition! I felt the tears coming into my eyes.
“Women folks are always seeing something a man can’t see—because it isn’t there for him to see!” declared the captain. “I have made her keep her mouth shut best I could! Nice thing it would be to have it go out in business circles that you’re a lunatic. That old hippohampus uncle of yours would try to get himself appointed your guardian. He makes believe to be a great friend of yours, I know, when he calls, but I reckon he’s only hiding that old grudge that Vose has told me about.There’syour friend, Ross—Vose! He’s the old boy to tie to!” I was getting considerable information from Capt. Rask Hol-strom without weakening his confidence in my sanity.
“And then, outside of Vose, it has really been a good thing for you to get back here near your girl,” pursued the captain. “Now you take Kama on that point! I say women folks have too much imagination. When you told me you wanted the Kingsley girl to stay away from you till you was fit to look at, why, then you was showing hard, ordinary common sense. In spite of all that Kama or anybody else said about her coming in here, I done just what you asked me to do—for I believe in men standing by each other. But, as I have told you, Kama was bound to have it that a screw was loose because you didn’t want your girl first thing! And Kama has been bound and determined to hang on here till she is sure you’re all right with your girl. But I can’t see that your girl is in any great pucker about you! She hasn’t showed up!” The sweat started out on me. Into what sort of a tangle had my affairs been drawn?
“But I’ve got a good girl, even if she is flighty in her thoughts—as I suppose girls’ nature is about this lovey-dove business. I used to sit and hear you talk to her on theZizaniaabout those three rings and that girl back in Levant—all mush, mush right in the middle of that wind-up job—and, I swear, if I didn’t think you were crazy then, though she wouldn’t have it that way! Said you were all right. Kama and I never did seem to agree very well on much of anything. After the settlement with the underwriters, when you were right as a trivet and wanted to stay on the Coast, then she insisted that you were out of your head—as I don’t mind telling you noe when we’re going—and she fairly picked you up and lugged you back here. You were too sick to help yourself, you know! Made me help her do it! For you and your girl, said she! I ain’t sure but what youwasa little delirious there at times. But being here with Vose has done you good. However, I like West the best. So as I say, I reckon Kama and I will pack up and start back. Furthermore, you know, I’m summonsed for that trial.” I merely stared at the old gossiper.
“I don’t want to be too hard on those critters,” he said, musingly. “There was a big temptation and Marcena Keedy knew how to stir ’em up. When he lolloped that word ‘gold’ around in his mouth he always made me drool.”
Didn’t I remember, also? Only too well!
“No, I’m going to use some discretion in my testimony,”
Captain Rask chatted on. “I have been running over in my mind what happened. Now, if you’re a mind to, let me kind of rehearse it over to you so that you can check up my memory. I’ll hate to have any law-sharks tangle me on the stand. If I make a slip catch me up on it.”
I assured him that I would, and I settled back in bed with great joy in my heart.
He gave me the most wonderful story I ever read or ever listened to—wonderful because it concerned myself, my friends, my hopes, and my fortune; wonderful, because I was in it, acted in it, and now for the first time was hearing what I had done. He droned out the hair-raising narrative without showing special interest in it, confident that I knew the happenings as well as he; at the most interesting point, in order to collect his thoughts in regard to Marcena Keedy, he stopped and pared and munched an apple; I was saving my own face in the matter and I did not dare to prod him.
I am not minded to make much account of the details of that story. In this yarn I have been telling what I do know—not what I have heard from another man’s lips. Let this much suffice: I recovered the rest of theGolden Gatetreasure, so far as human knowledge of it went, the jettisoned gold was dragged for and raised, and then mutiny, which had been secretly organized by Keedy and the Finn, developed into a bloody battle which had been won against numbers by the rifles of the lawful guards. Keedy would not fight—he had prodded the other poor devils to do that—and the San Francisco men took the law into their hands when theZizaniawas on the high seas and hung Keedy from the derrick boom. So, there’s enough in a nutshell to make quite a book by itself!
And then while Captain Rask meditatively wagged his jaws on another apple I lay and gnawed my nervous lips and wondered how much money I had in the world! I did not dare to ask questions. I felt as bitterly fearful as a straitened merchant who has lost all run of his bank credits and is afraid to ask his bank how he stands; the fear of giving one’s self away becomes terror pretty vital!
“However, I’m going to pass the rest of my days without worrying about their troubles,” declared the captain, again clacking shut his knife blade. “They brought it on themselves, though I shall swear on the stand that Keedy toled them into the scrape. You and I did right by the faithful ones—especiallyyou, for you could give out a better line of talk—when we pulled that hundred thousand out of the underwriters and added it to the hundred thousand of our own. They’re satisfied, even the Snohomish Glutton in his new restaurant, and Ingot Ike, who has gone to board with him. Clear consciences—that’s what we’ve got, Ross!”
But how much clear profit? The fact that we had handed out one hundred thousand dollars was a consoling bit of information. There naturally must be plenty more where that came from!
“Do all the folks here—do the people in Levant know how well we’re fixed?” I faltered.
“Sure! I ain’t ashamed of it. Are you? I haven’t let the yarn lose anything by the way I have told it. It has been a good way of killing time.”
So everybody else in Levant, except myself, knew how rich I was!
And then that infernal old tiddlywhoop yawned, got up, and stamped out of the room, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. I didn’t have spirit enough to stop him and ask the great question.
I don’t know just how wild I looked while I sat there, but I know I felt wild. Then Kama Holstrom came into the room.
I was conscious that my features were not obeying my volition. I had not been able to make that clacking tongue of mine behave; now my face was just as disobedient. I wanted with all my heart to beam gratitude and joy on her, but I seemed to be trying to manage a stiff mask. If she had turned and escaped in sheer fright I would not have blamed her.
I entirely mistook the expression on her face when she stood there and stared at me. Her eyes were wide with what appeared to be terror. Her lips parted and her cheeks grew pale. Then she ran to the side of the bed, plumped down on her knees, set both her little hands about one of mine and cried, “Thank the good God! You have come back—you have come back!”
And that’s how a woman knows.
The balm of her tears bathed my hand when she put her forehead down and hid her face. It was not white any longer—the warm color flooded it and I ought to have been content for a time with what I could bring in the compass of my gaze. But I wanted to have a blessing from her eyes, and when I struggled to lift her face she suddenly released my hand and hurried to the window and sat down.
“I didn’t mean to make a fool of myself that way,” she panted. “But when I saw your eyes I knew you had come back—and it has been so long—and the others haven’t understood!”
“When I came to myself, just now, Kama, your father was here and I didn’t confess to him. What I know now and what you have known all along we must keep to ourselves.”
“Yes! Nobody has believed what I was so sure of!”
We sat there in silence for a long time.
“Do you remember?” she asked, almost whispering the question.
“Only flashes. Not much. But your father has just been chatting on, and now I have the story without his realizing what news he was telling me.”
I was the first to break another silence:
“I know from what he said how faithful and self-sacrificing—”
“You force me to remind you how much we owe to you, sir. It makes me very uncomfortable. It’s twitting me of a debt which father and I can never pay. Please don’t!”
So there was conversation closed on that point; I did not feel like making Kama Holstrom uncomfortable.
“It’s all coming about just as it should. It will be all right from now on,” she said, after a time.
She had recovered all her usual serenity; she was the girl of theZizania, cool and distant. I was irritated by her manner. That aloofness was not a square deal between folks who had been through what we had suffered together. It seemed to me that I was not being treated right—first that matter-of-fact manner of Captain Rask and now this coolness on the daughter’s part. Her first greeting had given me an appetite for more of the same sort. Of course, I didn’t expect to be welcomed back from the shadows with a brass band and speeches—but some kind of hankering or dissatisfaction was gnawing inside me and I felt ugly and cross and childish.
“I haven’t intended to go too far in anything, sir. But I have been so anxious to help all I could—forgive me, but father and I do owe you so much! Don’t scowl so! I’ll not mention debts again. I hope you won’t think I was too eager—and that I meddled. But I went to her! I did not want her to misunderstand! It was due you and due myself—and her. So I have explained everything. I have told her the story. It will come about all right—just as you hope—I am sure! I did not intend to stay here—but I have been worrying about—But now you can speak for yourself!”
She rattled it off so fast I couldn’t get in a word. She looked relieved when she had finished—as if she had been carrying around something very disagreeable and had handed it over to somebody for keeps. And I was obliged to wait quite a while before I dared to trust myself to reply to her. What she had handed to me seemed to be about as gratifying as if she had dropped a sea-crab down the back of my neck and then sat back and expected me to give her three cheers.
“Look-a-here!” I yapped. “Where did you get the notion that I wanted you or anybody else to act as my attorney over there?” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the Kingsley house.
“But your head was not right—I knew it,” she stammered. “I was afraid there would be a misunderstanding—and after what you made me promise on theZizania—”
“Don’t you know that I was as crazy as a coot?”
“But I knew that deep down in your heart you must love her.”
“A crazy man doesn’t tell the truth.”
“Oh, he does when he is revealing his real soul.”
“I wasn’t revealing any soul. I was babbling away—and I knew I was talking fool talk and I couldn’t stop my tongue. I didn’t mean that guff. And now you have got this thing all tangled up by talking to Celene Kingsley. I can do my own love-making!” That temper of mine was working in fine shape. And Kama Holstrom was no wilting daisy in temperament!
“From what I know of you myself, and whatothers—I call no names—have said, you are about as well qualified in that direction as a catfish.” She jumped up and stamped her foot.
“But I know now what love—”
“Mr. Sidney, you have just insulted me because I tried to be your friend. And yoursweetheart,” she sneered, “has no better manners than you! She has not even thanked me for bringing you to her! I do not understand! I shall go to her at once and tell her that you are in your right senses at last. After this you handle your own love affairs. Don’t you mention the word ‘love’ to me again!” She marched out and banged the door so violently behind her that all the brass handles on the old high-boy were left jingling shrilly—as if the high-boy had gone into a spasm of giggles over my comeuppance!
In a few minutes the kindly face of Dodovah Vose appeared at the door, his eyes full of solicitude.
“Fall out of bed?” he inquired.
“No, out of heaven,” I snapped. He came in and shut the door and showed anxiety.
“See here, son, you seem to have a turn for the worse all of a sudden. You’ve been gaining fine. But your eyes look crazy to-day. And what you just said—”
Say, I came nigh bawling out Dodovah Vose, right then! Nobody seemed to know anything about my case except Kama Holstrom—and she knew too blamed much! I rolled myself out of bed and stood on my feet.
“My Lawd!” gasped my old friend, “you mustn’t do that. It’s against her orders. You’re sartain out of your head!”
“Don’t you worry one mite about my knob,” I shouted, cracking my scarred knuckles against it—and the pain in the knuckles made me all the uglier. “I’m not going to be nursed and fussed over any longer. I have been nursed too much already. They’re even nursing my own private business—and making it sicker all the time. From now on I’m going to tend to my own affairs. Mr. Vose, help me get these bandages off my feet!”
He stood back and flapped his hands and protested. I knew he felt that I had become a lunatic, and so I convinced him by walking up and giving him a good, sane stare.
“Do you think I’m going to stay in bed the rest of my life—a man who has so much to live for as I have?”
“That’s right—a man who is wuth—”
At last somebody was going to post me on my financial status—satisfy my wild eagerness to find out! And I stopped him.
“Shut up,” I fairly barked. “I don’t want to be reminded of that every five minutes. Excuse me, Mr. Vose. But get my clothes.”
I had made up my mind that only one voice in all the world should tell me what my sacrifice had wrung from the Pacific for my own self! Silly notion, eh? No matter. I felt that a certain pair of lips would bless the information when it passed them.
A half-hour later I was dressed after a fashion. I walked down-stairs, or it may be better to say that I scuffed and skated down, for I could not squeeze my feet into shoes and was provided with a pair of Dodovah Vose’s slippers—carpet affairs with a hectic rose on each instep.
I found Captain Holstrom on the porch with my uncle Deck; their chairs were tipped back and they were confabbing in most amiable fashion. My uncle grinned at me, and I floundered for words because I wasn’t sure what I had said to him prior to my awakening or just what our diplomatic relations were. His grin encouraged me.
“Damn it,” he ejaculated, “I’ve said right along it was best for you to be up and around. But Cap’s girl would have it t’other way. Feel all right, sonny?”
“I’ll feel better, Uncle Deck, if I’m sure that you and I will never have any more misunderstandings. As we have said—”
I stopped there and waited, figuring that I had left about the right kind of an opening to find out what wehadsaid. My uncle arose and clapped my shoulder.
“Sonny, I tell you again, now when you stand man-fashion in front of me, that the night when I took my first trick at sitting up with you we fixed it all! For I found out how you felt, underneath, abouthim!And about the whole proposition!” He nudged me. “I’m taking my comfort these days watching him. No more liberty than old Potter Crabtree’s clay-grinding hoss—around and around in an everlasting circle. I hope he’ll live long enough to pay his debts—that means a considerable stretch of enjoyment for me. I wouldn’t trig his wheel for all the world!”
That was how it stood, eh? And I let it stand, for I wasn’t just sure what my private sentiments were in regard to Judge Kingsley at that time. Furthermore, I had some very special business of my own on my mind. I turned to Captain Rask.
“Where is Kama?”
“Reckon she’s over saying good-by to your girl.”
My uncle stared at me—I must have been telling him things when he sat up with me.
Saying good-by! Then she probably had told her father that she was ready to go away. I started across the village square, sliding along in my huge slippers like a man walking on snow-shoes. I banged the big knocker on the front door of Judge Kingsley’s mansion and the maid admitted me. I was not bashful that day—I walked right into the sitting-room.
If I am any judge of expressions I did not interrupt any amiable and confidential tête-à-tête. The two girls rose and, after a few moments of constraint, Celene Kingsley asked me to be seated. I told her that I preferred to stand; I reckon that I wasn’t sure that Icouldsit down; the stiffness of the whole situation made me feel as if I did not have any joints.
“I have finished my errand,” declared Kama. The red was in her cheeks and there was no encouragement for me in her eyes. “I will say, Mr. Sidney, that I have apologized to Miss Kingsley for meddling in matters between you two. I thought I understood and I have tried to help. I deserve exactly what I have received! I assure you both that I will keep out of the way after this.” She started for the door, but I was standing where I could block her. I supplemented my interference by an appeal to the lady of the mansion.
“Will you ask Miss Holstrom to remain for a moment?” I entreated. And Miss Holstrom did remain, biting her lower lip with impatience.
“I haven’t had much time for thinking on what to say,” I confessed. “I don’t know how to talk to ladies very well, anyway.”
My face was flaming—I could hardly control my voice—I felt sure that I was committing a dreadful sin in point of etiquette and all that—but once more I was playing a big game in my life—bigger, even, for the sake of my happiness than when I offered to go down after the remainder of the treasure of theGolden Gate. I was operating again on human nature—and that nature was in the complex little personality of Kama Holstrom who pressed impatiently at my elbow, frowning at me. I knew with all my heart and soul that unless she stood in the presence of Celene Kingsley and myself—as she then stood—and heard the truth about my boyhood folly, my cause was lost; because the pride of a girl makes the way of a man with a maid a mighty doubtful proposition.
“May I hope that you have found out that I am not the scoundrel you believed me to be?”
“I know the truth now. My father is wiser! I am trying to find words—”
She hesitated, just as if she did not know what she ought to say to me, and I could not blame her for feeling pretty uncertain. She looked at me with a sort of kindly and tolerant expression—but, good heavens, there wasn’t any love in her eyes! I had found out what love-light was like when Kama Holstrom kneeled beside my bed that afternoon!
As I have confessed and have shown, I was pretty much of a blunderer in affairs with women. But do me this credit in your estimate: I had not come into the presence of Celene Kingsley that day harboring any more illusions as to how I stood with her. I was awake! Think back with me! Never had she given me a word of affection. Rather, her tolerance of me had been plainly inspired by her zeal in her father’s behalf. After that piece of brazen idiocy of mine, when I had taken her in my arms, she had been careful to keep out of my reach. Allow me to say that I had been doing some swift and coherent thinking on my way from the tavern.
In my soul was the shamed consciousness that I had been making a real thing out of a dream—and had been babbling unwarrantably. I was a pitiful object as I stood there between them—I deserved punishment at the hands of both of them. For I had made free with Celene Kingsley’s name and had misdirected Kama Holstrom’s devoted obedience to a promise.
I say, I knew with all my heart and being that I had never struck a spark of real love from the condescending nature of Judge Kingsley’s daughter; I knew that I loved Kama Holstrom with all the tender devotion one pours forth to the true mate.
Yet I dared not say a word lest I should appear as an atrocious cad seeking release from the old love before taking on the new.
Equally did Celene Kingsley’s high-bred delicacy restrain her tongue; I understood that she did not want to betray me as a mere cheeky boaster.
So we stood there looking at one another, three as unhappy specimens of humanity as there were in Levant that day.
“I am too much of a fool to know what to say and how to say it,” I blurted, and the tears ran down my cheeks.
It was Celene who stepped into the breach; she wasn’t in love, and she was cooler than the other two in the party.
She walked up to Kama and took her hands in caressing grasp.
“Don’t you understand, dear?”
“No,” faltered the poor girl.
“I hoped you could understand without obliging me to speak. I hoped you would guess when I refused to discuss certain matters with you—I made you angry, and I’m sorry.”
“I know I meddled—”
“My dear, I understood you all the time! I understood my old school friend, too!” She reached out her hand and drew me close to Kama. “He has been very noble in his help in a great trial in my family, dear! I owe my happiness to him. And I’m speaking out, rather boldly—rather bluntly, because I want to help him in obtaining his great happiness. I know what must happen to make him happy.” She put Kama’s hand in mine. “Now, my dear, do not force me to disparage one of the best young men I have ever known by telling you that I never dreamed of him as a husband—nor was I anything else to him except a school-day fancy, a—”
“An inspiration to set me on the way to make something of myself,” I insisted.
“And now—say it, Ross Sidney, or you’re a coward—say it, and let me hear it! She deserves it!”
“I have found out that real love differs from boyhood fancies—and I—I—want to—”
She gently pushed us toward the door while I was stammering.
“You want to tell a dear girl the sweetest story in the world, Ross Sidney! My blessing on you both. Good night!”
We did not speak to each other for some time after we were out of doors together. I took her arm in gentle manner and led her steps away from the tavern. We could see its lights in the early dusk, and I wanted to keep away from lights for a time.
I was glad the autumn dusk had settled—a sliver of new moon was a comforting sight for a lover.
“I guess neither of us knows very well how to talk about love, Kama,” I told her, hobbling along beside her as best I could. The judge’s orchard was shaded by the evening’s gloom, and when I turned down there she did not resist.
“I’m sure I’m mighty awkward about making love,” I went on, “but God knows I want to learn how.”
“Why do you think I can do any better as a tutor in love than as an attorney?” she asked.
“Because I’ll be such a willing pupil, dear.”
“I heard you inform Miss Kingsley with a great deal of earnestness just now that you have found out what real love is like.” She couldn’t keep all the naughty teasing from her tone, though her voice trembled. “Who is the fortunate one?”
Then I caught her to me, and with her warm cheek close to mine and her lips near and never denying caresses, I told her and I convinced her.
“I think,” she admitted, after a long time and after many words there in the blessed shadows, “that you are entitled to your diploma, Ross. You are showing me that you know more than your tutor. But is there a woman who is not jealous when she is in love? Here!” She pressed into my hand a little packet; it contained the three rings. I drew her along to the cleft tree. I dropped them into the hollow.
“One for fancy, one for folly, one for the freakish dreams of boyhood!” I told her. “All buried! Come back to the tavern, precious girl! I want you to tell Dodovah Vose how to decorate the parlor for the wedding!”
She reached on tiptoe and plucked two apples from the old tree. She gave one to me.
“An apple of gold from the only woman in the world,” I said.
“Don’t say ‘gold’ to me, Ross! Don’t! A boy of your age with half a million safe in the bank—”
There was my news at last! I kissed the lips which told me!
Then, eating the sweet fruit of our new knowledge of life and of each other, we went on our way up through the whispering trees toward the welcoming, glowing windows of the old tavern.