A Rock in the Baltic by Robert Barr (free romance novels TXT) 📖

written to you?"

"He has not."

"Oh, well, I give it up. Tell me the tragedy your own way."

For answer Katherine withdrew her hands from behind her, and offered to her friend a sheet of paper she had been holding. Dorothy saw blazoned on the top of it a coat-of-arms, and underneath it, written in words of the most formal nature, was the information that Prince Ivan Lermontoff presented his warmest regards to Captain Kempt, U.S.N., retired, and begged permission to pay his addresses to the Captain's daughter Katherine. Dorothy looked up from the document, and her friend said calmly:

"You see, they need another Katherine in Russia."

"I hope she won't be like a former one, if all I've read of her is true. This letter was sent to your father, then?"

"It was, and he seems to regard it as a huge joke. Said he was going to cable his consent, and as the 'Consternation' has sailed away, he would try to pick her up by wireless telegraphy, and secure the young man that way: suggests that I shall have a lot of new photographs taken, so that he can hand them out to the reporters when they call for particulars. Sees in his mind's eye, he says, a huge black-lettered heading in the evening papers: 'A Russian Prince captures one of our fairest daughters,' and then insultingly hinted that perhaps, after all, it was better not to use my picture, as it might not bear out the 'fair daughter' fiction of the heading."

"Yes, Kate, I can see that such treatment of a vital subject must have been very provoking."

"Provoking? I should say it was! He pretended he was going to tack this letter up on the notice-board in the hall of the hotel, so that every one might know what guests of distinction the Matterhorn House held. But the most exasperating feature of the situation is that this letter has been lying for days and days at our cottage in Bar Harbor. I am quite certain that I left instructions for letters to be forwarded, but, as nothing came, I telegraphed yesterday to the people who have taken our house, and now a whole heap of belated correspondence has arrived, with a note from our tenant saying he did not know our address. You will see at the bottom of the note that the Prince asks my father to communicate with him by sending a reply to the 'Consternation' at New York, but now the 'Consternation' has sailed for England, and poor John must have waited and waited in vain."

"Write care of the 'Consternation' in England."

"But Jack told me that the 'Consternation' paid off as soon as she arrived, and probably he will have gone to Russia."

"If you address him at the Admiralty in London, the letter will be forwarded whereever he happens to be."

"How do you know?"

"I have heard that such is the case."

"But you're not sure, and I want to be certain."

"Are you really in love with him, Kate?"

"Of course I am. You know that very well, and I don't want any stupid misapprehension to arise at the beginning, such as allows a silly author to carry on his story to the four-hundredth page of such trash as this," and she gently touched with her toe the unoffending volume which lay on the ground beneath the hammock.

"Then why not adopt your father's suggestion, and cable? It isn't you who are cabling, you know."

"I couldn't consent to that. It would look as if we were in a hurry, wouldn't it?"

"Then let me cable."

"You? To whom?"

"Hand me up that despised book, Kate, and I'll write my cablegram on the fly-leaf. If you approve of the message, I'll go to the hotel, and send it at once."

Katherine gave her the book, and lent the little silver pencil which hung jingling, with other trinkets, on the chain at her belt. Dorothy scribbled a note, tore out the fly-leaf, and presented it to Katherine, who read:

"Alan Drummond, Bluewater Club, Pall Mall, London. Tell Lamont that his letter to Captain Kempt was delayed, and did not reach the Captain until to-day. Captain Kempt's reply will be sent under cover to you at your club. Arrange for forwarding if you leave England.

Dorothy Amhurst."

When Katherine finished reading she looked up at her friend, and exclaimed: "Well!" giving that one word a meaning deep as the clear pool on whose borders she stood.

Dorothy's face reddened as if the sinking western sun was shining full upon it.

"You write to one another, then?"

"Yes."

"And is it a case of--"

"No; friendship."

"Sure it is nothing more than that?"

Dorothy shook her head.

"Dorothy, you are a brick; that's what you are. You will do anything to help a friend in trouble."

Dorothy smiled.

"I have so few friends that whatever I can do for them will not greatly tax any capabilities I may possess."

"Nevertheless, Dorothy, I thoroughly appreciate what you have done. You did not wish any one to know you were corresponding with him, and yet you never hesitated a moment when you saw I was anxious."

"Indeed, Kate, there was nothing to conceal. Ours is a very ordinary exchange of letters. I have only had two: one at Bar Harbor a few days after he left, and another longer one since we came to the hotel, written from England."

"Did the last one go to Bar Harbor, too? How came you to receive it when we did not get ours?"

"It did not go to Bar Harbor. I gave him the address of my lawyers in New York, and they forwarded it to me here. Lieutenant Drummond was ordered home by some one who had authority to do so, and received the message while he was sitting with me on the night of the ball. He had got into trouble with Russia. There had been an investigation, and he was acquitted. I saw that he was rather worried over the order home and I expressed my sympathy as well as I could, hoping everything would turn out for the best. He asked if he might write and let me know the outcome, and, being interested, I quite willingly gave him permission, and my address. The letter I received was all about a committee meeting at the Admiralty in which he took part. He wrote to me from the club in Pall Mall to which I have addressed this cablegram."

There was a sly dimple in Katherine's cheeks as she listened to this straightforward explanation, and the faintest possible suspicion of a smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. She murmured, rather than sang:

"'A pair of lovesick maidens we.'"

"One, if you please," interrupted Dorothy.

"'Lovesick all against our will-- '"

"Only one."

"'Twenty years hence we shan't be A pair of lovesick maidens still.'"

"I am pleased to note," said Dorothy demurely, "that the letter written by the Prince to your father has brought you back to the Gilbert and Sullivan plane again, although in this fairy glen you should quote from Iolanthe rather than from Patience."

"Yes, Dot, this spot might do for a cove in the 'Pirates of Penzance,' only we're too far from the sea. But, to return to the matter in hand, I don't think there will be any need to send that cablegram. I don't like the idea of a cablegram, anyhow. I will return to the hotel, and dictate to my frivolous father a serious composition quite as stately and formal as that received from the Prince. He will address it and seal it, and then if you are kind enough to enclose it in the next letter you send to Lieutenant Drummond, it will be sure to reach Jack Lamont ultimately."

Dorothy sprang from the hammock to the ground.

"Oh," she cried eagerly, "I'll go into the hotel with you and write my letter at once."

Katherine smiled, took her by the arm, and said:

"You're a dear girl, Dorothy. I'll race you to the hotel, as soon as we are through this thicket."


CHAPTER IX


IN RUSSIA

THE next letter Dorothy received bore Russian stamps, and was dated at the black-smith's shop, Bolshoi Prospect, St. Petersburg. After a few preliminaries, which need not be set down here, Drummond continued:

"The day after Jack arrived in London, there being nothing whatever to detain him in England, we set off together for St. Petersburg, and are now domiciled above his blacksmith shop. We are not on the fashionable side of the river, but our street is wide, and a very short walk brings us to a bridge which, being crossed, allows us to wander among palaces if we are so disposed. We have been here only four days, yet a good deal has already been accomplished. The influence of the Prince has smoothed my path for me. Yesterday I had an audience with a very important personage in the Foreign Office, and to-day I have seen an officer of high rank in the navy. The Prince warns me to mention no names, because letters, even to a young lady, are sometimes opened before they reach the person to whom they are addressed. These officials who have been kind enough to receive me are gentlemen so polished that I feel quite uncouth in their presence. I am a little shaky in my French, and feared that my knowledge of that language might not carry me through, but both of these officials speak English much better than I do, and they seemed rather pleased I had voluntarily visited St. Petersburg to explain that no discourtesy was meant in the action I had so unfortunately taken on the Baltic, and they gave me their warmest assurances they would do what they could to ease the tension between our respective countries. It seems that my business here will be finished much sooner than I expected, and then I am off on the quickest steamer for New York, in the hope of seeing Niagara Falls. I have met with one disappointment, however. Jack says he cannot possibly accompany me to the United States. I have failed to arouse in him the faintest interest about the electric works at Niagara. He insists that he is on the verge of a most important discovery, the nature of which he does not confide in me. I think he is working too hard, for he is looking quite haggard and overdone, but that is always the way with him. He throws himself heart and soul into any difficulty that confronts him, and works practically night and day until he has solved it.

"Yesterday he gave the whole street a fright. I had just returned from the Foreign Office, and had gone upstairs to my room, when there occurred an explosion that shook the building from cellar to roof, and sent the windows of our blacksmith's shop rattling into the street. Jack had a most narrow escape, but is unhurt, although that fine beard of his was badly singed. He has had it shaved off, and now sports merely a mustache, looking quite like a man from New York. You wouldn't recognize him if you met him on Broadway. The carpenters and glaziers are at work to-day repairing the damage. I told Jack that if this sort of thing kept on I'd be compelled to patronize another hotel, but he says it won't happen again. It seems he was trying to combine two