Chapter 20

Island, and, from hints dropped by that wretched little adventurer, de Poincilit, I feel sure they have fallen into his hands. Believe me, Elsie, I was half mad when I helped him to steal the boat.”

“Steal the boat! What boat?”

“Has not Captain Courtenay told you?”

“Not a word.”

“Ah, he is a true gentleman. But you forget. You heard what he said to de Poincilit before he went to the Guanaco cañon?”

“Yes; I did not understand. Oh, my poor Isobel, how you must have suffered, while I have been so happy.”

“If only I could recover my papers—”

“May I ask Arthur to help?”

“He knows the worst of me already. One more shameful disclosure cannot add to my degradation.”

“Isobel, how little you know him!” Thus spoke Elsie, after fourteen days. Truly there is much enlightenment in a hug!

Monsieur le Comte Edouard de Poincilit, to his intense chagrin, found that a ship’s captain has far-reaching powers when he chooses to exert them. Rather than enter a Montevidean jail, where people have died suddenly of nasty fevers, he not only restored the missing documents but submitted to a close scrutiny of his own belongings, which resulted in the pleasing discovery that he was not a French count, but a denizen of Martinique—most probably a defaulting valet or clerk. No one troubled to inquire further about him. His passage money was refunded and he was bundled ashore. Courtenay’s view was that he had heard, by some means, of Isobel’s intended departure from Valparaiso, and deemed it a good chance of winning her approval of his countship, seeing that such titles are not subjected to serious investigation in South America. Suarez took his Fuegian bride up country, where Mr. Baring and Dr. Christobal established them on a small ranch.

Isobel renewed her voyage somewhat chastened in spirit. But her volatile nature soon survived the shocks it had received. By the time the _Kansas_ put her ashore at Tilbury, to be clasped in the arms of a timid and tearful aunt, she was ready as ever for the campaign of glory she had mapped out in London and Paris.

And she was a success, too. Her father’s victory over the copper ring, her own adventures, which lost nothing in the telling, and her vivacious self-confidence, carried her into society with a whirl. Recently, her engagement to an impecunious peer was announced.

* * * * * *

Captain Courtenay, R.N., and his wife are not such distinguished personages, but their romance had a sequel worthy of its unusual beginning. They were married quietly a week after the _Kansas_ reached London. There was some war scare in full blast at the moment, and a Lord of the Admiralty who deigned to read the newspapers thought it was a pity that a smart sailor should not risk his life for his country rather than in behalf of base commerce. So he looked up Courtenay’s record, and found that it was excellent, the young lieutenant’s reason for resigning his commission being the necessity of supporting his mother when her estate was swept away by a bank failure. The Sea Lords made him a first-rate offer of reinstatement in the service, at a higher rank, without any loss of seniority, and they went about the business with such dignified leisure that Dr. Christobal had time to find out, through men whom he could trust, that Elsie’s small estate in Chile contained one of the richest mines in the country. He secured a bid of many thousands of pounds for it, and advised Mrs. Courtenay to accept half in cash and half in shares of the exploiting company.

Hence, there was no need for Courtenay to decline a new career in the magnificent service which Mr. Boyle once sniffed at, and Elsie became a prominent figure in that very select circle which clusters around the ports mostly favored by his Majesty’s ships.

It was not unreasonable that Gray should go back to Chile to take charge of Elsie’s mine, nor that Mr. Boyle should become captain and Walker chief engineer, of the _Kansas_, but there was one wholly unexpected development which fairly took Elsie’s breath away when she heard of it.

She was with her husband in London. While passing the National Gallery one day, she remembered the picture by Claude which deals with the embarkation of Saint Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins. A painter herself, Elsie had an artist’s appreciation of the vanity which led Turner to bequeath his finest canvasses to the nation with the proviso that they should be placed cheek by jowl with those of his great rival, the Lorrainer. So a fat fox-terrier was given in charge of a catalogue seller, and they passed up the steps.

It was a students’ day, and the galleries were crowded with embryonic geniuses. Courtenay waxed sarcastic anent the rig of Claude’s ships; he was laughing at the careless grace with which several of the Baozan maidens were standing in a boat just putting off from a wharf, when a lady cried sharply:

“George, how careless of you! You are sitting on my mahl-stick.”

“Sorry, my dear,” said a tall thin man, rising from a camp-stool.

“Good gracious, it’s Mr. Tollemache,” whispered Elsie.

“Gad, so it is. Let’s hail him.”

Tollemache’s solemn face brightened when he heard the hail. He introduced his wife, an eminently artistic being who answered to the name of Jennie. She at once enlisted Elsie in an argument as to atmospheres, but Tollemache drew Courtenay aside.

“Got married when I reached home that trip,” he explained. “The wife comes here every Thursday, an’ I have to carry the kit. Rather rot, isn’t it?”

“It is certainly a change from stoking the donkey-boiler, and bowling over Alaculofs like nine-pins.”

“That’s what I tell her, but she says the Indians were Boeotian, and the landscape, as I describe it, had the crude coloring of the Newlyn school, which she abominates. She thinks Turner might approve of Suarez in his black and white stripes, but the Guanaco crater reminds her of Gustave Doré, who always exaggerated his tone values. I learn that sort of gabble by heart. Jennie’s a good sort, yet sometimes she talks rot—”

“George,” said Mrs. Tollemache, “pack up my portfolio. We are going to lunch with your friends. Mrs. Courtenay and I have so much to talk about. We find we think alike on many points. I am delighted to have met your wife, Captain Courtenay. My husband raves about her.”

“So do I, ma’am,” cried Courtenay, gallantly, yet with a subtle glance at Elsie which told her he meant what he said.

THE END