The Stowaway Girl Part 28

"Philip, you do not understand. I--I cared for n.o.body then . . . and my uncle said he was in danger of bankruptcy . . . and Mr. Bulmer undertook to help him if I would consent. . . ."

"Yes," agreed Philip, with an air of pleasant detachment, "I see. You are in a first-rate fix. I was always prepared for that. c.o.ke told me about Bulmer--warned me off, so to speak. I forgot his claims at odd times, just for a minute or so, but he is a real bugbear--a sort of matrimonial bogey-man. If all goes well, and we enter Pernambuco without being fired at, you will be handed over to the British Consul, and he will send a rousing telegram about you to England. Bulmer, of course, will cause a rare stir at home. Who wouldn't? No wonder you are scared! It seems to me that there is only one safe line of action left open."

Iris did not respond to his raillery. She was despondent, nervous, uncertain of her own strength, afraid of the hurricane of publicity that would shortly swoop down on her.

"I wish you would realize how I feel in this matter," she said, with a persistence that was at least creditable to her honesty of purpose. "A woman's word should be held as sacred as a man's, Philip."

He turned and met her eyes. There was a tender smile on his lips.

"So you really believe you will be compelled to marry Mr. Bulmer?" he cried.

"Oh, don't be horrid!" she almost sobbed. "I cuc--cuc--can't help it."

"I have given some thought to the problem myself," he said, for, in truth, he was beginning to be alarmed by her tenacity, though determined not to let her perceive his changed mood. "Curiously enough, I was thinking more of your dilemma than of the signals when we were overhauled by the _Sao Geronimo_ this morning. Odd, isn't it, how things pop into one's mind at the most unexpected moments? While I was coding our explanation that we were putting into Pernambuco for repairs, and that no steam yacht had been sighted between here and the River Plate, I was really trying to imagine what the cruiser's people would have said if I had told them the actual truth."

His apparent gravity drew the girl's thoughts for an instant from contemplating her own unhappiness.

"How could you have done that?" she asked. "We are going there to suit Senhor De Sylva's ends. We have suffered so much already for his sake that we could hardly betray him now."

Hozier spread wide his hands with a fine affectation of amazement.

"I wasn't talking about De Sylva," he cried. "My remarks were strictly confined to the question of your marriage. I know you far too well, Iris, to permit you to go back to Bootle to be lectured and browbeaten by your uncle. I have never seen him, but, from all accounts, he is a rather remarkable person. He likes to have his own way, irrespective of other folks' feelings. I am a good guesser, Iris. I have a pretty fair notion why c.o.ke meant to leave our poor s.h.i.+p's bones on a South American reef. I appreciate exactly how well it would serve Mr. David Verity's interests if his niece married a wealthy old party like Bulmer. By the way how old is Bulmer?"

"Nearly seventy."

Even Iris herself smiled then, though her tremulous mirth threatened to dissolve in tears.

"Ah, that's a pity," said Hozier.

"It is very unkind of you to treat me in this manner," she protested.

"But I am trying to help you. I say it is a pity that Bulmer should be a patriarch, because his only hope of marrying you is that I shall die first. Even then he must be prepared to espouse my widow. By the way, is it disrespectful to describe him as a patriarch? Isn't there some proverb about three score years and ten?"

"Philip, if only you would appreciate my dreadful position----"

"I do. It ought to be ended. The first parson we meet shall be commandeered. Don't you see, dear, we really must get married at Pernambuco? That is what I wanted to signal to the cruiser: 'The _Unser Fritz_ is taking a happy couple to church.' Wouldn't that have been a surprise?"

Iris clenched her little hands in despair. Why did he not understand her misery? Though she was unwavering in her resolution to keep faith with the man who had twitted her with taking all and giving nothing in return, she could not wholly restrain the tumult in her veins. Married in Pernambuco! Ah, if only that were possible! Yet she did not flinch from the lover-like scrutiny with which Philip now favored her.

"I am sure we would be happy together," she said, with a pathetic confidence that tempted him strongly to take her in his arms and kiss away her fears. "But we must be brave, Philip dear, brave in the peaceful hours as in those which call for another sort of courage.

Last night we lived in a different world. We looked at death, you and I together, not once but many times, and you, at least, kept him at bay. But that is past. To-day we are going back to the commonplace.

We must forget what happened in the land of dreams. I will never love any man but you, Philip; yet--I cannot marry you."

"You will marry me--in Pernambuco."

"I will not because I may not. Oh, spare me any more of this! I cannot bear it. Have pity, dear!"

"Iris, let us at least look at the position calmly. Do you really think that fate's own decree should be set aside merely to keep David Verity out of the Bankruptcy Court?"

"I have given my promise, and those two men are certain I will keep it."

"Ah, they shall release you. What then?"

"You do not know my uncle, or Mr. Bulmer. Money is their G.o.d. They would tell you that money can control fate. We, you and I, might despise their creed, but how am I to s.h.i.+rk the claims of grat.i.tude? I owe everything to my uncle. He rescued my mother and me from dire poverty. He gave us freely of his abundance. Would you have me fail him now that he seeks my aid? Ah, me! If only I had never come on this mad voyage! But it is too late to think of that now. Perhaps--if I had not promised--I might steel my heart against him--but, Philip, you would never think highly of me again if I were so ready to rend the hand that fed me. We have had our hour, dear. Its memory will never leave me. I shall think of you, dream of you, when, it may be, some other girl--oh, no, I do not mean that! Philip, don't be angry with me to-day. You are wringing my heart!"

It was in Hozier's mind to scoff in no measured terms at the absurd theory that he should renounce his oft-won bride because a pair of elderly gentlemen in Bootle had made a bargain in which she was staked against so many bags of gold. But pity for her suffering joined forces with a fine certainty that fortune would not play such a scurvy trick as to rob him of his divinity after leading him through an Inferno to the very gate of Paradise. For that is how he regarded the perils of Fernando Noronha. He was young, and the ethics of youth cling to romance. It seemed only right and just that he should have been proved worthy of Iris ere he gained the heaven of her love. There might be portals yet unseen, with guardian furies waiting to entrap him, and he would brave them all for her dear sake. But his very soul rebelled against the notion that he had become her chosen knight merely to gratify the unholy ardor of some decrepit millionaire. He laughed savagely at the fantasy, and his protest burst into words strange on his lips.

"I shall never give you up to any other man," he said. "I have won you by the sword, and, please G.o.d, I shall keep you against all claimants.

Twenty-two men sailed out of Liverpool on board the Andromeda, and it was given to me among the twenty-two that I should pluck you from darkness into light. I had only seen you that day on the wharf, yet I was thinking of you constantly, little dreaming that you were within a few yards of me all the time. I was planning some means of meeting you again when our surly-tempered skipper bade me burst in the door that kept you from me. And that is what I have been doing ever since, Iris--breaking down barriers, smas.h.i.+ng them, whether they were flesh and blood or nature's own obstacles, so that I might not lose you.

Give you up! Not while I live! Why, you yourself dragged me away from certain death when I was lying unconscious on the _Andromeda's_ deck.

A second time, you saved not me alone but the ten others who are left out of the twenty-two, by bringing us back to Grand-pere in the hour that our escape seemed to be a.s.sured had we put out to sea. We are more than quits, dear heart, when we strike a balance of mutual service. We are bound by a tie of comrades.h.i.+p that is denied to most.

And who shall sever it? The man who gains three times the worth of his s.h.i.+p by reason of the very dangers we have shared! To state such a mad proposition is to answer it. Who is he that he should sunder those whom G.o.d has joined together? And what other man and woman now breathing can lay better claim than we to have been joined by the Almighty?"

The strange exigencies of their lives during the past two days had ordained that this should be Philip's first avowal of his feelings.

Under the stress of overpowering impulse he had clasped Iris to his heart when they were parting on the island. In obedience to a stronger law than any hitherto revealed to her innocent consciousness the girl had flown to his arms when he came to the hut. And that was all their love-making, two blissful moments of delirium wrenched from a time of a gaunt tragedy, and followed by a few hours of self-negation. Yet they sufficed--to the man--and the woman is never too ready to count the cost when her heart declares its pa.s.sion.

But the morrow was not to be denied. Its bitter awakening had come.

In the very agony of a sublime withdrawal Iris realized what manner of man this was whom she had determined to thrust aside so that she might keep her troth. She dared not look at him. She could not compel her quivering lips to frame a word of excuse or reiterated resolve. With a heart-breaking cry of sheer anguish she fled from him, running away along the deck with the uncertain steps of some sorely stricken creature of the wild.

He did not try to restrain her. Heedless of the perplexed scowl with which c.o.ke was watching him from the bridge, he looked after her until she vanished in the cabin which had been vacated for her use by the chief engineer of the vessel. Even her manifest distress gave him a sense of riotous joy that was hardly distinguishable from the keenest spiritual suffering.

"Give you up!" he muttered again. "No, Iris, not if Satan brought every dead Verity to aid the living one in his demand."

c.o.ke, to whom tact was anathema, chose that unhappy instant to summon him to take charge of the s.h.i.+p. The German master and crew had not caused trouble to their conquerors after the first short struggle.

They washed their hands of responsibility, professed to be satisfied with the written indemnity and promise of reward given by De Sylva, and otherwise placed the resources of the vessel entirely at his disposal.

A more peaceable set of men never existed. Though they numbered sixteen, three more than the usurpers, it was quite certain that the thought of further resistance never entered their minds. If anything, they hailed the adventure with decorous hilarity. It formed a welcome break in the monotony of their drab lives. Of course, they were utterly incredulous as to the ability of a scarecrow like Dom Corria to fulfil his financial pledges. Therein they erred. He was really a very rich man, having followed the ill.u.s.trious example set by generations of South American Presidents in acc.u.mulating a fine collection of gilt-edged scrip during his tenure of office, which said scrip was safely lodged in London, Paris, and New York. But the world always refuses to a.s.sociate rags with affluence, and these worthy Teutons regarded De Sylva and c.o.ke as the leaders of a gang of dangerous lunatics who should be humored in every possible way until a port was reached.

It was precisely that question of a port which had engaged c.o.ke in earnest consultation with De Sylva and San Benavides on the bridge while Iris and Hozier were lacerating each other's feelings on the p.o.o.p.

Apparently, the point was settled when Hozier joined the triumvirate.

c.o.ke glanced at the compa.s.s, and placed the engine-room telegraph at "Full Speed Ahead," for the _Unser Fritz_ had once been a British s.h.i.+p, and still retained her English appliances.

"Keep 'er edgin' south a bit," said he to Hozier. "There's no knowin'

w'en that crimson cruiser will show up again, but we must try and steal a knot or two afore sundown."

The order roused Hozier from his stupor of wrathful bewilderment.

"Why south?" he asked. "If anything, Pernambuco lies north of our present course."

"We're givin' Pernambuco the go-by. It's Maceio for us, quick as we can get there."

Hozier was in no humor for conciliatory methods. He turned on his heel, and walked straight to where De Sylva was leaning against the rails.

"Captain c.o.ke tells me that we are not making for Pernambuco," he said, meeting the older man's penetrating gaze with a glance as firm and self-contained.

"That is what we have arranged," said Dom Corria.

"It does not seem to have occurred to you that there is one person on board this s.h.i.+p whose interests are vastly more important than yours, senhor."