Part 7

I gave him some brandy at a bar, and after that we took a four-wheeled cab--he insisting on the privacy--and drove to a private hotel in Cecil-street, Strand. They did not know him there, and I engaged a room for him and ordered dinner, taking these things upon myself, since he was as helpless as a babe. After the meal he seemed somewhat better, and I telegraphed to Ramsgate for his man, though it was impossible that the fellow could be with him until the following morning. In the meantime I found myself doing valet's work for him--but I had his story; and although it was not until some months later that another supplied some of the missing links in it, he telling me the barest outline, I will set it down here plainly as a narrative, and without any of those "says I's" and "says he's," which were the particular abomination of Defoe, as they have been of many since his day.

The complete explanation of this mystery was one, I think, to astonish most people. It was so utterly unlooked for, that I was led at the first hearing to believe the narrator insane. He told me that at three o'clock on the afternoon of July 5th, he had left his hotel on the East Cliff at Ramsgate--the day being glorious, and a full sun playing upon the Channel and many ships--and had determined to walk over to St. Peters, where his _fiancée_ expected him to a tennis party. With this intention, he struck along the cliff towards Broadstairs, but had gone only a few paces, when a seaman stopped him, and touching his hat respectfully, said that he had a message for him.

"Well, my man, what is it?" Maclaren asked--I had the dialogue from the seaman himself--being in a hurry as those who walk the ways of love usually are.

"My respects to your honor," replied the fellow, "but the ketch _Bowery_, moored off the pier-head, 'ud be glad to see your honor if convenient, and if not, maybe to-morrow?"

"What the devil does the man mean?" cried his lordship, but the seaman plucking up courage continued,--

"An old friend of your honor's for sure he is, my guv'ner, Abraham Burrow, what you had the acquaintance of in New York city."

"Well, and why can't he come ashore? I remember the man perfectly--I have every cause to"--a true remark, since Abraham Burrow then owed the speaker some two thousand pounds; and had shown no unprincipled desire to pay it.

"The fact is, my lordship," replied the seaman, whose vocabulary was American and strange, "the fact is he's tidy sick, on his beam ends, I guess with brounchitis; and he won't be detaining you not as long as a bosun's whistle if you go aboard, and be easin' of him."

Now, although this comparatively juvenile lover was in a mighty hurry to get to St. Peter's, there was yet a powerful financial motive to send him to the ship. He had done business with this Abraham Burrow in America; the man had--we won't say swindled--but been smart enough there to relieve him of a couple of thousand pounds. To hope for the recovery of such a sum seemed as childish as a sigh for the moon. Maclaren had not seen Burrow for twelve months, and did not know a moment before this meeting whether he was alive or dead. Yet here he was in a yacht off Ramsgate harbor, desiring to see his creditor, and to see him immediately. The latter reflected that such a visit would not occupy half an hour of his time, that it might lead to the recovery of some part of his money, that he could make his excuses to the pretty girl awaiting him--in short, he went with the seaman; and in a quarter of an hour he stepped on board an exceeding well-kept yacht, which lay beyond the buoy over against the East Pier; and all his trouble began.

The craft, as I have said, was ketch rigged, and must have been of seventy tons or more. There was a good square saloon aft, and a couple of tiny cabins, the one amidships, the other at the poop. When Lord Maclaren went aboard, three seamen and a boy were the occupants of the deck; but a King Charles spaniel barked at the top of the companion; and a steward came presently and asked the visitor to go below. He descended to the saloon at this; but the sick man, they told him, lay in the fore cabin; and thither he followed his very obsequious guide.

I had the account of this episode and of much that follows from two sources, one a man I met in New York last summer, the other, the victim of the singularly American conspiracy. Lord Maclaren's account was simple--"As there's a heaven above me, Sutton," said he, "I'd no sooner put my foot in the hole when the door was slammed behind me, and bolted like a prison gate." The American said, "I guess the old boy had hardly walked right in, before they'd hitched up the latch, and he was shouting glory. Then the skipper let the foresail go--for the ketch was only lyin'-to, and in ten minutes he was standing out down the Channel. But you never heard such a noise as there was below in all your days. Talk about a sheet and pillow-case party in an insane asylum, that's no word for it."

The fact that the "illustrious nobleman," as the penny society papers called him, was trapped admitted of no question. He realized it himself in a few moments, and sat down to wonder, "who and why the devil, etc.," in five languages. I need scarcely say that the thing was an utter and inexplicable mystery to him. He thought at first that robbery was the motive, for he had the model of the bracelet upon him; and as he sat alone in the cabin, he really feared personal violence. He told me that he waited to see the door open, and a villain enter, armed with Colt or knuckleduster, after the traditional Adelphian mood; but a couple of hours passed and no one came, and after that the only interruption to his meditation was the steward's knock upon the cabin door, and his polite desire to know "Will my lord take tea?" "My lord" told him to carry his tea to a latitude where high temperatures prevail; and after that, continued to kick lustily at the door, and to make original observations upon the owner of the yacht, and upon her crew, until the light failed. Yet no one heeded him; and when it was dark the roll of the yacht to the seas made him sure that they stood well out, and were beating with a stiff breeze.

Unto this point, temper had dominated him; but now a quiet yet very deep alarm took its place. He began to ask himself more seriously if his position were not one of great danger, if he had not to face some mysterious but very daring enemy--even if he were like to come out of the adventure with his life. Yet his mind could not bring to his recollection any deed that had merited vindictive anger on the part of another; nor was he a blamable man as the world goes. He paid his debts--every three years; he was amongst the governors of five fashionable charities, and the only scandalous case which concerned him was arranged between the lawyers on the eve of its coming into court. The matrons told you that he was "a dear delightful rogue"; the men said that he was "a cunning old dog"; and between them agreed that he had read the commandments at least. Possibly, however, those hours of solitude in the cabin compelled him to think rather of his vices than of his virtues--and it may be that the fear was so much the more real as his shortcomings were secret. Be that as it may, he assured me that he had never suffered so much as he did during that strange imprisonment, and that he cried almost with delight when the door of the cabin opened, and he saw the table of the saloon set for dinner, and light falling upon it from a handsome lamp below the skylight. During one delicious moment he thought himself the victim of a well-meaning practical joker--the next his limbs were limp as cloth, and he sank upon a cushioned seat with a groan which must have been heard by the men above.

This scene has been so faithfully described to me that I can see it as clearly as though I myself stood amongst the players. On the one hand, a pretty little American girl, with hands clasped and malicious laughter about her rosy mouth; on the other, a shrinking, craven, abject shadow of a man, cowering upon the cushions of a sofa, in blank astonishment, and hiding his view of her with bony fingers. At a glance you would have said that the girl was not twenty--but she was twenty-three, the picture of youth, with the color of the sea-health upon her cheeks, the spray of the sea-foam glistening in her rich brown hair. She had upon her head a little hat of straw poised daintily; her dress was of white serge with a scarf of yacht-club colors at the throat; but her feet were the tiniest in the world, and the brown shoes which hid them not unfit for an artist's model. And as she stood laughing at the man who had become her guest upon the yacht, her attitude would have made the fortune of half the painters in Hampstead. The two faced each other thus silently for a few minutes, but she was the first to speak, her voice overflowing with rippling laughter.

"Well," she said, "I call this real good of you, my lord, to come on my yacht--when you were just off to the other girl--and your wedding's fixed for the eighteenth of July. My word, you're the kindest-hearted man in Europe."

He looked up at her, some shame marked in his eyes, and he said,--

"Evelyn, I--I--never thought it was you!"

"Then how pleased you must be. Oh, I'm right glad, I tell you; I'm just as pleased as you are. To think that we've never met since you left N'York in such a flurry that you hadn't time even to send me a line--but of course you men are so busy and so smart that girls don't count, and I knew you were just dying to see me, and I sent the boat off saying it was old Burrow--how you love Burrow!--and here you are, my word!"

She spoke laboring under a heavy excitement, so that her sentences flowed over one another. But he could scarce find a coherent word, and began to tremble as she went on,--

"You'll stay awhile, of course, and--why, you're as pale as spectres, I guess. Now if you look like that I shall begin to think that we're not the old friends we were in N'York a year ago, and walk right upstairs to Arthur. You remember my brother Arthur, of course you do. He was your particular friend, wasn't he?--but how you boys quarrel. They really told me two months ago in the city that Arthur was going in the shooting business with you. Fancy that now, and at your age."

This sentence revealed what was lacking in the character of the girl; it showed that malicious, if rather low and vulgar, cunning which prompted the whole of this adventure; and it betrayed a revenge which was worthy of a Frenchwoman. Maclaren had but to hear the harsh ring of the voice to know that the girl who had threatened him months ago in New York had met her opportunity, and that she would use it to the last possibility. Every word that she uttered with such meaning vehemence cut him like a knife; his hair glistened with the drops of perspiration upon it; his right hand was passed over his forehead as though some heat was tormenting his brain. And as her voice rose shrilly, only to be modulated to the pretence of suavity again, he blurted out,--

"Evelyn, what are you going to do?"

"I--my dear Lord Maclaren--I am entirely in your hands; you are my guest, I reckon, and even in America we have some idea of what that means. Now, would you like to play cards after dinner, or shall we have a little music?"

The steward entered the cabin at this moment, and the conversation being interrupted, Maclaren chanced to see that the companion was free. A wild idea of appealing to the captain of the yacht came to him, and he made a sudden move to mount the ladder. He had but taken a couple of steps, however, when a lusty young fellow, perhaps of twenty-five years of age, barred the passage, and pushed him with some roughness into the cabin again. The man closed the long, panelled door behind him; and then addressed the unwilling guest.

"Ah, Maclaren, so that's you--devilish good of you to come aboard, I must say."

The newcomer was Evelyn Lenox's brother, the owner of the ketch _Bowery_. He acted his part in the comedy with more skill than his sister, having less personal interest in it; indeed, amusement seemed rather to hold him than earnestness. It was perfectly clear to Maclaren, however, that he would stand no nonsense; and seeing that a further exhibition of feeling would not help him one jot, the unhappy prisoner succumbed. When the dinner was put upon the table, he found himself sitting down to it mechanically, and as one in a dream. It was an excellent meal to come from a galley; and it was made more appetizing by the wit and sparkle of the girl who presided, and who acted her _rôle_ to such perfection. She seemed to have forgotten her anger, and cloaked her malice with consummate art. She was a well-schooled flirt--and her victim consoled himself with the thought, "They will put me ashore in the morning, and I can make a tale." By ten o'clock he found himself laughing over a glass of whisky and soda. By eleven he was dreaming that he stood at the altar in the church of St. Peter's and that two brides walked up the aisle together.

* * * * *

The next picture that I have to show you of Maclaren is one which I am able to sketch from a full report of certain events happening on the evening of his wedding day. The yacht lay becalmed some way out in the bay of the Somme; the sea had the luster of a mirror, golden with a flawless sheen of brilliant light which carried the dark shadows of smack-hulls and flapping lug-sails. There was hardly a capful of wind, scarce an intermittent breath of breeze from the land; and the crew of the _Bowery_ lay about the deck smoking with righteous vigor, as they netted or stitched, or indulged in those seemingly useless occupations which are the delight of sailors. Often however, they stayed their work to listen to the rise and fall of sounds in the saloon aft; and once, when Maclaren's voice was heard almost in a scream, one of them, squirting his tobacco juice over the bulwarks, made the sapient remark, "Well, the old cove's dander is riz now, anyway."

The scene below was played vigorously. Evelyn Lenox sat upon the sofa, her arms resting upon the cabin table, her bright face positively alight with triumph. Maclaren stood before her with clenched hands and gnashing teeth. Arthur, the brother, was smoking a pipe and pretending to read a newspaper, leaving the conversation to his guest, who had no lack of words.

"Good God, Evelyn," he said, "you cannot mean to keep me here any longer--to-morrow's my wedding day!"

She answered him very slowly.

"How interesting! I remember the time, not so long ago, when my wedding day was fixed--and postponed."

He did not heed the rebuke, but continued cravenly,--

"You do not seem to understand that your brother and yourself have perpetrated upon me an outrage which will make you detested in every country in Europe. Great Heaven! the whole town will laugh at me. I shan't have a friend in the place; I shall be cut at every club, as I'm a living man."

The girl listened to him, her eyes sparkling with the excitement of it. "Did you never stop to think," said she, "when you left America, like the coward you were, that people would laugh at me, too, and I should never be able to look my friends in the face again? Why, even in the newspapers they held me up to ridicule when my heart was breaking. You speak of suffering; well, I have suffered."

Her mood changed, as the mood of women does--suddenly. The feminine instinct warred against the actress, and prevailed. She began to weep hysterically, burying her head in her arms; and a painful silence fell on the man. He seemed to wait for her to speak; but when she did so, anger had succeeded, and she rose from her place and stamped her foot, while rage seemed to vibrate in her nerves.

"Why do I waste my time on you?" she cried; "you who are not worth an honest thought. Pshaw! 'Lord Maclaren, illustrious nobleman and great sportsman'"--she was quoting from an American paper--"go and tell them that for ten days you have humbled yourself to me, and have begged my pity on your knees. Go and tell them that my crew have held their sides when the parts have been changed, and you have been the woman. Oh, they shall know, don't mistake that; your wife shall read it on her wedding tour. I will send it to her myself, I, who have brought the laugh to my side now, scion of a noble house. Go, and take the recollection of your picnic here as the best present I can give to you."

I was told that Maclaren looked at her for some moments in profound astonishment when she pointed to the cabin door. Then, without a word, he went on deck, to find the yacht's boat manned and waiting for him. He said himself that many emotions filled him as he stepped off the yacht--anger at the outrage, desire for revenge, but chiefly the emotions of the thought, was there time to reach St. Peter's for the wedding ceremony? He did not doubt that lies would save him from the American woman, if things so happened that he could reach England by the morning of the next day. But could he? Where was he? Where was he to be put ashore? He asked the men at the oars these questions in a breath, standing up for one moment as the boat pushed off to shake his fist at the yacht, and cry, "D--n you all!" But the answer that he got did not reassure him. He was to be put ashore, the seaman said, at Crotoy, the little town on a tongue of land in the bay of the Somme. There was a steamer thence once a day to Saint Valery, from which point he could reach Boulogne by rail. He realized in a moment that all his hope depended on catching the steamer. If she had not sailed, he would arrive at Boulogne before sunset, and, if need were, could get across by the night mail and a special train from Folkestone. But if she had sailed! This possibility he dared not contemplate.

The men were now rowing rapidly towards the shore, whose sandy dunes and flat outlines were becoming marked above the sea-line. The yacht lay far out, drifting on a glassy mirror of water; the sun was sinking with great play of yellow and red fire in the arc of the west. Maclaren had then, however, no thought for Nature's pictures, or for seascapes. One burning anxiety alone troubled him--had the steamer sailed? He offered the men ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred pounds if they would catch her. The remark of one of them that she left on the top of the tide begot in him a mad eagerness to learn the hour of high-water; but none of those with him could remember it. He found himself swaying his body in rhythm with the oars as coxswains do; or standing up to look at the white houses shorewards. Another half-hour's rowing brought him a sight of the pier; he shouted out with a laugh that might have come from a jackal when he saw that the steamer was moored against it, and that smoke was pouring heavily from her funnels.

"Men," he said, "if you catch that boat, I'll give you two hundred and fifty pounds!" and later on their lethargy moved him to such disjointed exclamations as "For the love of heaven, get on to it!" "Now, then, a little stronger--fine fellows, all of you--a marriage depends upon this." "I'll give you a gold watch apiece, as I'm alive." "By----, she's moving--no, she isn't, there's time yet, if you'll put your backs on to it--time, time--oh, Lord, what a crawl, what a cursed crawl!"

If one had peered into the faces of the yachtsmen critically, one might have detected the ripples of smirks about their lips; but Maclaren could not take his eyes away from the steamer, and the import of the suppressed amusement was lost upon him. The little town of Crotoy, with the garish _établissement des bains_, the picturesque church, and the time-wrecked ramparts escarped by the ceaseless play of currents, was then not half a mile away; but a bell was ringing on the pier, and there was all the hurry and the press known in "one packet" or "one train" towns. Those who had much to do did it slowly, that they might enjoy leisure to blow whistles or to shout; those who had little atoned by great displays of ineffective activity. Some ran wildly to and fro near the steamer; others bawled incomprehensible ejaculations, and incited, both those who were to leave by the ship, and those who were not, to hurry, or they would be late. Presently the little passenger steamer whistled with a hoarse and lowing shriek, and cast foam behind her wheels. Maclaren observed the motion, and cried out as a man in pain, waving his arms wildly. Those on shore mistook as much as they could see of his surprising signals for a parting salute to the vessel; and she left ten minutes after her time--without him.

He was hot from the battle of excitement, rivulets of perspiration trickling upon his face; but he had breath to curse the crew of the yacht's boat for five minutes when he stepped ashore; and the request of the coxswain to drink his health stirred up uncounted gifts for oath-making within him. In a quarter of an hour he was raving about the town of Crotoy, threatening to do himself injury if a boat were not forthcoming to carry him to St. Valery, whence he could get train to Boulogne. But the day was nigh gone, and the local seamen were at their homes. Few cared for his commission, and the man who took it ultimately set him down just twenty minutes after the last train had left.

* * * * *

The accounts given in the society papers for the abandonment of the wedding between Lord Maclaren and the Hon. Christine King were many. The true one is found in the simple statement that his lordship did not reach England until the evening of the day which had been fixed for the ceremony. So the presents were returned--and I kept the pearls which were to have made the famous anchor bracelet. And when I think the matter over, I cannot wonder at Maclaren's hatred of them, or of his wish that I should burn them.

"Sutton," he said, "I was more than a fool. I ought to have remembered that Evelyn Lenox was with me when I saw the piece of stuff similar to that I wanted you to make. Why, I got the very notion of it from her, and it was only when one of your idiots let a society journalist know what you were doing for me that she heard of the marriage, and of my being at Ramsgate."

But the rest of his remarks were purely personal.

THE WATCH AND THE SCIMITAR.

THE WATCH AND THE SCIMITAR.

The city of Algiers, the beautiful El Djzaïr, as the guide-book maker calls it, has long ceased to charm the true son of the East, _blasé_ with the nomadic fulness of the ultimate Levant, or charged with those imaginary Oriental splendors which are nowhere writ so large as in the catalogues and advertisements of the later day upholsterer. This is not the fault of the new Icosium, as any student of the Moorish town knows well; nor is it to be laid to the account of the French usurpation, and that strange juncture of Frank and Fatma, which has brought the boulevard to the city of the Corsairs and banished Mohammed to the shadow of the Kasbah. Rather, it is the outcome of coupons and of co-operative enthusiasm, which sends the roamer to many lands, of which he learns the names, and amongst many people with whose customs he claims familiarity.