Back Aa

Prince or Chauffeur? A Story of Newport

Close

<h3> CHAPTER XXI </h3> <h3> PLAIN SAILOR TALK </h3> Miss Hatch had some inkling of the Prince's intention when she ushered him into the Wellington study, and as she met Sara in the hall on the way out of the library, she held a gloomy countenance. "Mrs. Van Valkenberg," she said in response to Sara's bright smile of greeting, "please don't think me impertinent, but—will you, if possible, see that the Prince is not alone with Miss Wellington to-day? And—cannot you prod that terribly sluggish McCall?" Sara looked at the young woman wonderingly for a minute and then held out her hand, laughing. "Miss Hatch, you 're a jewel." Sara found Jack near the garage. But she did not have much success with him. He was grumpy and, replying to Sara's assertion that the situation was rapidly becoming rife with disagreeable possibilities, he replied that he did not care a very little bit, and that Anne could marry all the princes in Christendom for all he cared. So Sara, flushing with impatience, told him he was an idiot and that she would like to shake him. The only satisfaction she derived from the incident was that Anne, who came upon them as they were parting, was grumpy, too. Synchronous moods in the two persons whose interests she held so closely to heart was a symptom, she told herself, that gave warrant for hope. Rimini had turned up with the new car and in it Anne, Sara, Koltsoff, and Robert Marie went to the Casino. Mrs. Wellington drove to market in her carriage. Mr. Wellington remained in his study and among other things had Buffalo on the telephone for half an hour. Armitage spent the morning with the boys and showed them several shifty boxing and wrestling tricks which won Ronald to him quite as effectually as the jiu-jitsu grip had won his younger brother the preceding day. At luncheon, Anne's peevish mood had not diminished, which, to Sara, would have been a source of joy had she not feared that it was due to the fact that Koltsoff had not been good company all the morning. He was, in truth, quite at his wits' end to account for the behavior of Yeasky, who had been instructed to get into communication with him by ten o'clock, and had failed to do so. Thus Koltsoff, even when with Anne, had been preoccupied and in need of a great deal of entertaining. Armitage took him to the city after lunch and as usual was instructed to return to The Crags. This gave Jack opportunity to see Chief Roberts and to learn that Yeasky was resting easily and cheerfully, apparently eager to live up to the very letter of his contract. Anne was in her room when he returned and Sara was with her. Koltsoff came back in a taxicab in a frightful state of mind, bordering on mental disintegration, about four o'clock—just in time to keep an appointment with his host and Marie to drive to the Reading Room. As he crossed the veranda, a French bull pup ran playfully between his feet and nearly tripped him. He kicked at the animal, which fled squealing down the steps. "Hey, you," cried the peppery Ronald, "that's my dog." The Prince turned with a half snarl and flung himself into the house. "The great big Turk!" said Ronald, turning to Armitage. "What does he want here, anyway?" It was nearly five o'clock when the telephone of the garage rang and Armitage was ordered to bring Anne's car to the house. Her manner was quiet, her voice very low, as she gave him his orders. "To town by the back road," she said. She stopped at one or two stores along Thames Street and finally settling herself back in her seat, said, "Now you can drive home." Armitage looked at her for a second. "Do you mind if I take a roundabout way? I should like to talk to you." Anne returned his gaze without speaking. Then she nodded slowly. "Yes, if you like," she said. "Thank you." He drove the car up the steep side streets, across Bellevue Avenue, and then headed into a little lane. Here he stopped. Overhead ash and beech and maple trees formed a continuous arch. Gray stone walls hedged either side. Beyond each line of wall, pleasant orchards stretched away. The sidewalks were velvet grass. Birds of brilliant plumage flashed among the foliage and their twittering cries were the only sounds. Patches of gold sunlight lay under the orchard trees, level rays flowed heavily through the branches and rested on the moss-grown stones. The pastoral beauty, the great serenity, the utter peace seemed to preclude words. And the spell was immediately upon the two. The down-turned brim of her hat shaded her eyes, but permitted sunlight to lie upon her mouth and chin and to rest where her hair rippled and flowed about her bare neck. She raised her face—and her eyes, even, level, wondering, sought his. His eyes were the first to fall, but in them she knew what she had read. Now the sunlight had fallen so low that it lay on her like a garment of light—she seemed some daughter of Hesperus, glorified. The waning afternoon had grown cooler and several blue-white clouds went careening overhead. She looked at them. "How beautiful!" she said. Then she looked at him again with her steady eyes. "You wished to talk, you said." Jack nodded. "Yes, I wish to, but I—I don't know exactly how to say it." She was smiling now. "How may I help you?" He shook his head doggedly. "I am a sailor, Miss Wellington." "You mean I am to hear plain sailor talk?" she quoted. "Good. I am ready." He began with the expression of a man taking a plunge. "Miss Wellington, I could say a great deal so far—so far as I am concerned, that I have no right to say, now.… But—are you going to marry Prince Koltsoff?" She started forward and then sank back. "You must not ask that," she said. "I know—I understand," he said rapidly, "but—but—you mustn't marry him, you know." "Must n't!" "Miss Wellington, I know, it is none of my business. And yet—Don't you know," he added fiercely, "what a girl you are? I know. I have seen! You are radiant, Miss Wellington, in spirit as in face. Any man knowing what Koltsoff is, who could sit back and let you waste yourself on him would be a pup. Thornton, of the Jefferson, has his record. Write to Walker, attaché at St. Petersburg, or Cook at Paris, or Miller at London—they will tell you. Why, even in Newport—" Jack paused in his headlong outburst and then continued more deliberately. "It is not for me to indict the man. I could not help speaking because you are you. I cannot do any more than warn you. If I transgress, if I am merely a blundering fool—if you are not what I take you for—forget what I have said. Send me away when we return." She had been listening to him, as in a daze. Now she shook her head. "I shall not do that," she said. "Did you take employment with us to say what you have said to me?" "No." She hesitated a moment. "I suppose all men of Koltsoff's sort are the same," she said musingly. "I am not quite so innocent as that. We are wont to accept our European noblemen as husbands with no question as to the wild oats, immediately behind them—or without considering too closely the wild oats that are to be strewn—afterwards. Ah, don't start; that is the way we expatriates are educated—no, not that; but these are the lessons we absorb. And so—" she was looking at Armitage with a hard face, "so the things that impressed you so terribly—I appreciate and thank you for your motives in speaking of them—do not appear so awful to me." Jack, his clean mind in a whirl, was looking at her aghast. "You—you—Anne Wellington! You don't mean that!" She flung her hands from her. "Thank you," she said. "Don't I? Oh, I hate it all!" she cried wildly, "the cross purposings of life; the constant groping—being unable to see clearly—the triumph of lower over higher things—I hate them all. Ah," she turned to Jack pitifully, "promise me for life, in this place of peace, the rest and purity and beauty and love of all this—promise, and I shall stay here now with you, from this minute and never leave it, though Pyramus or King Midas, as you please, beckon from beyond this mossy wall." "Are you speaking metaphorically?" Jack's voice quivered. "For if you are, I—" She interrupted, laughing mirthlessly. "I do not know how I was speaking. Don't bother. I am not worth it. I might have been had I met you sooner—Jack Armitage. For I have learned of you—some things. Don't," she raised her hand as Jack bent forward to speak. "You must n't bother, really. Last night I lived with you a big, clean, thrilling experience and saw strong men doing men's work in the raw, cold, salt air—and I saw a new life. And then—" she was looking straight ahead—"then I was led into a morass where the air was heavy like the tropics, and things all strange, unreal. And why—why now the doubt which of the two I had rather believe to-night. You were too late. I bade you come to us. I am glad, I am proud that I did—for now I know the reason. But—" she smiled wanly at him, "it should have been sooner." "Is—it—too late?" Jack's mouth was shut tight, the muscles bulging on either side of his jaw. "Is it? You—I must wait and see. I—I dreamed last night and it was of the sea, men rushing aboard a black battleship, rising and falling on great inky waves. It was good—so good—to dream that; not the other. Wait.… It is to be lived out. I am weak.… But there is a tide in the affairs of men—and women. Perhaps you—" She stopped abruptly. "Let us drive out of here, Mr. Armitage. Here, in this pure, wonderful place I feel almost like Sheynstone's Jessie." "What do you mean?" he asked sharply. She smiled. "Not what you thought I meant," she said gently. "Now, drive away, please." As they returned to the house, Mr. Wellington and his friend were alighting from the touring car; Koltsoff was not with them. As soon as he saw his daughter, Mr. Wellington, whose face was flushed, called Anne to him. "Say, Anne," he said, "is that Prince of yours a lunatic? Or what is he? "Why, no, father. Of course not. Why do you ask?" "Well, then, if he is n't crazy he is a plain, ordinary, damned fool. He was like a chicken with his head off all the afternoon, calling up on the telephone, sending telegrams, and then, between pauses, telling me he would have to leave right after the ball for Europe and wanting us all to sail with him. Then, at the last minute, some whiskered tramp came to the porch where we were sitting and the first thing I knew he had excused himself for the evening and was going off up the street with that hobo, both of them flapping their arms and exclaiming in each other's faces like a couple of candidates for a padded cell. Duke Ivan was a pill beside this man. And that is saying a whole lot, let me tell you." "Why, father!" exclaimed the girl. "I could cry! We are having that dinner for him to-night, and—and oh—" She rushed into the house and found her mother in her room. "Mother," she said, "Prince Koltsoff has gone off again! He was with father at the Reading Room and hurried away with a man, whom father describes as a tramp, saying he must be excused for the evening." "Very well," said Mrs. Wellington placidly; "we will have to have the play—without Hamlet, nevertheless." "But what shall I do?" "You might ask McCall." "Mother! Please! What can we do?" "Frankly, I don't know, Anne," said Mrs. Wellington. "I confess that this situation in all its ramifications has gone quite beyond me. It is altogether annoying. But let me prophesy: Koltsoff will not miss your dinner. He impresses me as a young man not altogether without brains—although they are of a sort." Mrs. Wellington was right. Koltsoff put in an appearance in time to meet Anne's guests, but the Russian bear at the height of his moulting season—or whatever disagreeable period he undergoes—is not more impossible than was Prince Koltsoff that night. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2