A Splendid Hazard by Harold MacGrath (important books to read txt) 📖

save him in spite of himself. You see, I have a bit of sentiment."

Hildegarde could have reached over and kissed his hand.

"Why didn't he tell this to me?" cried the admiral. "Why didn't he tell me? I would have helped him."

"To his death, perhaps," grimly. "For the money was only a means, not an end. The great-grandson of Napoleon: well, he will never rise from his obscurity. And sometime, when the clouds lift from his brain, he will remember me. I have seen in your American cottages the motto hanging on the walls-God Bless Our Home. Mr. Breitmann will place my photograph beside it and smoke his cigarette in peace."

And this whimsical turn caused even the admiral to struggle with a smile. He was a square, generous old sailor. He stretched his hand across the table. M. Ferraud took it, but with a shade of doubt.

"You are a good man, Mr. Ferraud. I'm terribly disappointed. All my life I have been goose-chasing for treasures, and this one I had set my heart on. You've gone about it the best you could. If you had told me from the start there wouldn't have been any fun."

"That is it," eagerly assented M. Ferraud. "Why should I spoil your innocent pleasure? For a month you have lived in a fine adventure, and no harm has befallen. And when you return to America, you will have an unrivaled story to tell; but, I do not think you will ever tell all of it. He will have paid in wretchedness and humiliation for his inheritance. And who has a better right to it? Every coin may represent a sacrifice, a deprivation, and those who gave it freely, gave it to the blood. Is it sometimes that you laugh at French sentiment?"

"Not in Frenchmen like you," said the admiral gravely.

"Good! To men of heart what matters the tongue?"

"Poor young man!" sighed Laura. "I am glad he has found it. Didn't I wish him to have it?"

"And you knew all this?" said Cathewe into the ear of the woman he loved.

Thinly the word came through her lips: "Yes."

Cathewe's chin sank into his collar and he stared at the crumbs on the cloth.

"But what meant this argument with the drivers?" asked Coldfield.

"Yes! I had forgotten that," supplemented the sailor.

"On the way back to Carghese, we should have been stopped. We were to be quietly but effectively suppressed till our Napoleon set sail for Marseilles." M. Ferraud bowed. He had no more to add.

The admiral shook his head. He had come to Corsica as one might go to a picnic; and here he had almost toppled over into a gulf!

The significance of the swift glance which was exchanged between M. Ferraud and Fitzgerald was not translatable to Laura, who alone caught it in its transit. An idea took possession of her, but this idea had nothing to do with the glance, which she forgot almost instantly. Woman has a way with a man; she leads him whither she desires, and never is he any the wiser. She will throw obstacles in his way, or she will tear down walls that rise up before him; she will make a mile out of a rod, or turn a mountain into a mole-hill: and none but the Cumaean Sibyl could tell why. And as Laura was of the disposition to walk down by the cemetery, to take a final view of the sea before it melted into the sky, what was more natural than that Fitzgerald should follow her? They walked on in the peace of twilight, unmindful of the curiosity of the villagers or of the play of children about their feet. The two were strangely silent; but to him it seemed that she must presently hear the thunder of his insurgent heart. At length she paused, gazing toward the sea upon which the purples of night were rapidly deepening.

"And if I had not made that wager!" he said, following aloud his train of thought.

"And if I had not bought that statuette!" picking up the thread. If she had laughed, nothing might have happened. But her voice was low and sweet and ruminating.

The dam of his reserve broke, and the great current of life rushed over his lips, to happiness or to misery, whichever it was to be.

"I love you, and I can no more help telling you than I can help breathing. I have tried not to speak, I have so little to offer. I have been lonely so long. I did not mean to tell you here; but I've done it." He ceased, terrified. His voice had diminished down to a mere whisper, and finally refused to work at all.

Still she stared out to sea.

He found his voice again. "So there isn't any hope? There is some one else?" He was very miserable.

"Had there been, I should have stopped you at once."

"But . . . !"

"Do you wish a more definite answer . . . John?" And only then did she turn her head.

"Yes!" his courage coming back full and strong. "I want you to tell me you love me, and while my arms are round you like this! May I kiss you?"

"No other man save my father shall."

"Ah, I haven't done anything to deserve this!"

"No?"

"I'm not even a third-rate hero."

"No?" with gentle raillery.

"Say you love me!"

"Amo, ama, amiamo . . ."

"In English; I have never heard it in English."

"So," pushing back from him, "you have heard it in Italian?"

"Laura, I didn't mean that! There was never any one else. Say it!"

So she said it softly; she repeated it, as though the utterance was as sweet to her lips as it was to his ears. And then, for the first time, she became supine in his arms. With his cheek touching the hair on her brow, they together watched but did not see the final conquest of the day.

"And I have had the courage to ask you to be my wife?" It was wonderful.

Napoleon, his hunted great-grandson, the treasure, all these had ceased to exist.

"John, when you lay in the corridor the other night, and I thought you were dying, I kissed you." Her arm tightened as did his. "Will you promise never to tell if I confess a secret?"

"I promise."

"You never would have had the courage to propose if I hadn't deliberately brought you here for that purpose. It was I who proposed to you."

"I'm afraid I don't quite get that," doubtfully.

"Then we'll let the subject rest where it is. You might bring it up in after years." Her laughter was happy.

He raised his eyes reverently toward heaven. She would never know that she had stood in danger.

"But your father!" with a note of sudden alarm. And all the worldly sides to the dream burst upon him.

"Father is only the 'company,' John."

And so the admiral himself admitted when, an hour later, Fitzgerald put the affair before him, briefly and frankly.

"It is all her concern, my son, and only part of mine. My part is to see that you keep in order. I don't know; I rather expected it. Of course," said the admiral, shifting his cigar, "there's a business end to it. I'm a rich man, but Laura isn't worth a cent, in money. Young men generally get the wrong idea, that daughters of wealthy parents must also be wealthy." He was glad to hear the young man laugh. It was a good sign.

"My earnings and my income amount to about seven-thousand a year; and with an object in view I can earn more. She says that will be plenty."

"She's a sensible girl; that ought to do to start on. But let there be no nonsense about money. Laura's happiness; that's the only thing worth considering. I used to be afraid that she might bring a duke home." It was too dark for Fitzgerald to see the twinkle in the eyes of his future father-in-law. "If worst comes to worst, why, you can be my private secretary. The job is open at present," dryly. "I've been watching you; and I'm not afraid of your father's son. Where's it to be?"

"We haven't talked that over yet."

The admiral drew him down to the space beside him on the parapet and offered the second greatest gift in his possession: one of his selected perfectos.

The course of true love does not always run so smoothly. A short distance up the road Cathewe was grimly fighting for his happiness.

"Hildegarde, forget him. Must he spoil both our lives? Come with me, be my wife. I will make any and all sacrifices toward your contentment."

"Have we not threshed this all out before, my friend?" sadly. "Do not ask me to forget him rather let me ask you to forget me."

"He will never be loyal to any one but himself. He is selfish to the core. Has he not proved it?" Where were the words he needed for this last defense? Where his arguments to convince her? He was losing; in his soul he knew it. If his love for her was strong, hers for this outcast was no less. "I have never wished the death of any man, but if he should die . . . !"

She interrupted him, her hands extended as in pleading. Never had he seen a woman's face so sad, "Arthur, I have more faith in you than in any other man, and I prize your friendship above all other things. But who can say must to the heart? Not you, not I! Have I not fought it? Have I not striven to forget, to trample out this fire? Have you yourself not tried to banish me from your heart? Have you succeeded? Do you remember that night in Munich? My voice broke, miserably, and my public career was ruined. What caused it? A note from him, saying that he had tired of the role and was leaving. It was not my love he wanted after all; a slip of paper, which at any time would have been his for the asking. Arthur, my friend, when you go from me presently it will be with loathing. That night you went to his room . . . he lied to you."

"About what?"

"I mean, if I can not be his wife, I can not in honor be any man's. God pity me, but must I make it plainer?"

Here, he believed, was his last throw. "Have I not told you that nothing mattered, nothing at all save that I love you?"

"I can not argue more," wearily.

"He will tire of you again," desperately.

"I know it. But in my heart something speaks that