Читать книгу The Bronze Hand - Carolyn Wells - Страница 6

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Sunday morning is Sunday morning the world over.

Whatever the situation, wherever the locality, whoever the people, Sunday morning has an atmosphere all its own, inevitable and unmistakable.

Entirely unsectarian, it is no respecter of persons, and everyone must feel its influence to a greater or less degree.

But it is not unpleasant. It is rather like a benediction, with its calm, peaceful outward effects and its undercurrents of cleanliness and Godliness.

And Sunday morning on the Pinnacle was rather like that Lotus land some poet wrote about, where it is always Saturday afternoon. The sunshine was gently golden, the air downy soft and the blue waves were mountains that skipped like little lambs.

The imminence of bouillon and sandwiches, like a magnet, drew to the deck hungry passengers who had eaten nothing since breakfast.

They came, not single spies, but in battalions, well-dressed, well-groomed, well-mannered, and in more or less audibly happy frame of mind.

Lily Gibbs was early in her chair, alive and alert to catch any sidelights on her neighbors.

The neighbors, mostly wrapped up in their own affairs and their own companions, bustled about her, unseeing, as the far flung line of rugs and pillows settled into place.

Mallory and Nash were doing their daily hundred rounds of the deck, pausing often to pass the time of Sunday morning.

Earlier, they had gone into conference with Garson, the Deck Steward, with the result that they now boasted chairs right in the heart of things. That is, in the immediate vicinity of the chairs of Oscar Cox and several other men of financial importance, the Campers and several other citizens of social importance, and a sprinkling of the sublimely important Younger Generation.

Two of these latter pounced on the young men, as they came toward their chairs, and claimed them for their own.

“You can be Gladys’ sheik, Mr. Mallory,” Sally Barnes twinkled at him, “and Mr. Nash shall be mine. Now, be nice and possessive, won’t you?”

The two men spoke this language fluently, and responded in kind, as they took the chairs the girls ordained.

The quartette had met before, and failing to make any headway in getting acquainted with the exclusive Miss Forman, Mallory had advised attaching themselves to these pretty little flappers.

The flappers’ mothers sat near by, smiling indulgently at the foolishness of their adored offspring.

Then Oscar Cox appeared on deck.

The audience didn’t rise, but they paid him the homage of turning sidewise in their chairs and craning their necks and staring hard as he made his triumphal entry.

Arrayed in white and looking more like a yachtsman on his own craft than a mere passenger, he was followed by a queer looking little man, who had factotum written large all over him.

Unheeding all else, he bore down on Cox’s chair, spread a rug, propelled his master into it, folded it over his legs with the deft speed of an envelope machine, and then, from a bag he carried, whisked out a leather pillow, some magazines, a pair of blue spectacles and a field glass.

He hung the bag on the chair arm and after a few whispered words and a nod from Cox, he folded his wings like an Arab and silently disappeared.

“How thrilling!” exclaimed Sally Barnes, “Mr. Cox has a minion, a henchman, a—.”

“A vassal, a serf at his side,” supplemented Mallory. “Well, he’s a big man, you know—a man of affairs.

“Love affairs?” asked Gladys, hopefully.

“I don’t know about that. I only know him superficially as yet. But I’ll find out for you—.”

“I’ll tell her,” broke in Cox himself, who was well within earshot. “Yes, Little Girl, I’m keen on love affairs. Any takers?”

Cox had a way with him, and his speech brought only beaming smiles from the watchful mothers of the girls.

“Don’t believe my white hair,” Cox went on, gayly. “It turned white in a single night, once when I was frightened ’most to death. Why, I have a nephew, my namesake, by the way, who is years younger than I am, and looks older. But then, he’s a parson—a clergyman in Boston.”

“I thought he was in South America,” Nash said, suddenly.

“My nephew, Oscar Cox? I tell you he’s a Unitarian minister, in Boston. Been there, in the same church, five or six years. His people love him. I’m not crazy about the lad myself. He’s too mild for my liking. But he found Hudder for me—so I owe him a debt of gratitude. Notice Hudder? My all-round caretaker? Queer looking, but capable—oh, one hundred per cent. capable.”

“Fascinating devil,” commented Sally Barnes, casually. “Is he a foreigner?”

“Well, he had some Spanish and Italian forebears. But I’m often uncertain whether he’s a devil or a dummkopf. He has traits of both. I never budge without him, he’s as necessary as a toothbrush. Well, who’s for shuffleboard or quoits, or what have you on the Sport Deck.”

Kicking away Hudder’s careful foldings, Cox jumped to his feet. In a moment, the watchful satellite was at his side, moving an empty chair or two, easing his master out into the open, and gathering up the fallen magazines.

Impatiently shaking off the hovering helper, Cox picked up a crowd of young people with his eyes, and strode off along the deck.

Pausing to look back for the others, he stood, with his back against the rail, his big, well-cut face complacent and proud; his sharp gray eyes darting here and there in general anticipation.

About two rows back, Maisie Forman was lying back in her chair, while beside her Max Trent sat upright, eagerly talking on some all-engrossing subject.

The all-seeing eyes of Oily Oscar took them in and then darted on to their neighbors, much as a jerky searchlight pursues its course.

“Isn’t he astonishing!” murmured Maisie, as the magnate passed on, and his merry train came trooping after.

“Yes,” and Trent smiled. “He looks like an event all ready to transpire. Or,” he added, “like a spider with a lot of flies.”

“Why, you don’t know anything bad about him, do you?” the girl asked.

“No, I don’t know him at all, do you?”

“Mercy, no. And I don’t want to.”

“Of course you don’t. I daresay he’s all right, as such men go. But he’s very much of the earth, earthy. When I say I don’t know him at all, I mean—er—personally. I met him with a crowd last night, and he’s a good mixer. He made friends right and left.”

“Never mind him,” and the girl turned her amber eyes on him. They were amber in this light, but sometimes they turned to beryl and topaz and all those shades that old-fashioned people used to call hazel.

Anyway, they were enchanting eyes, and Trent looked into them soberly as he resumed their broken off talk.

The Princess, as Nash had dubbed her, was not so upstage with people if she liked them. But travelling alone, as she was, she must needs watch her step and though the Captain would put her in touch with anyone she wanted, so far she had deigned to smile only on Max Trent, the story writer.

She found him interesting and entertaining, and though she purposed soon to make some pleasant woman acquaintances, she had so far, delayed it.

“Yes,” Trent picked up his interrupted tale, “I thought it would be of use to me in my detective stories, and so I took it up. Oh, I know it is quite the thing to guy a correspondence course in anything. But I guy the guys that guy it. I master it, it doesn’t master me. And, you’d be surprised, not only have I learned enough from it to write my yarns more convincingly and correctly, but I’ve become really interested in detection as a game.”

“What! You want to be a detective?”

“I don’t want to be one—I am one. I didn’t go for to do it. It was greatness thrust upon me. I just couldn’t help it. You see, with the bits I picked out of that correspondence course, and my natural bent for all that sort of thing, I just am a detective.”

“And are you going to take—what do you call ’em?—cases?”

“Oh, Lord no! I’m not going to practise. But it’s fine for my books. Don’t you see, I can write better detective stories if I am a detective.”

“Yes, I suppose so!” She lowered her voice. “Who is this bearing down upon us? He looks as if he meant to speak to us.”

She judged correctly, and in another moment the passer-by had paused.

“Good morning, Mr. Trent,” he said, in a quiet, pleasant way. “Sunday is a day when everybody ought to feel generous-minded and charitable and love their neighbors as themselves. So may I flock with you people a little bit?”

His manner and speech disarmed Miss Forman’s suddenly-roused antagonism and she smiled such a welcome, that Trent introduced the stranger at once.

“Mr. Mason,” he said, “Mr. Sherman Mason, of New York.”

Trent’s inflections gave Mr. Mason a standing at once, and Maisie extracted a hand from the fluttering scarf ends she was holding, and gave it to him in greeting.

He sat on the extended front of Trent’s chair, and the talk naturally drifted to books.

“Along came Ruth,” called out a gay and cheery voice, and Miss Gibbs, all uninvited, joined the group.

“I’ve been looking for you, Mr. Mason,” she chided, “you promised to take me to walk the deck this morning.”

Had Sherman Mason voiced his thoughts, he would have said he’d rather take her to walk the plank, but he merely bowed and smiled and observed that the morning was not over yet.

“No,” agreed Lily Gibbs, “and I’m glad of your defection since it gives me opportunity to meet the charming Miss Forman. May I introduce myself? I’m Lily Gibbs—Silly Lily—some folks call me!” she giggled appropriately. “Oh, I foresee we shall be such friends!”

She hunted out the girl’s hand from the enveloping chiffon folds of the futile scarf, and enthusiastically clasped it in both her own. “Dear Miss Forman, how glad I am to call you friend!”

“Thank you,” said Maisie, and though her voice was sweet, something about it made Miss Gibbs drop the hand she held, and sit up straighter.

Sherman Mason, seeing it all, smilingly threw himself into the breach and rose, saying, “Come Miss Gibbs, or we shan’t have any sort of tramp before lunch time.”

The two went off, and Trent looked whimsically at the frowning girl before him.

“I couldn’t help it,” he said, defensively. “Detectives spot criminals, but they can’t prevent crime.”

Maisie rippled a little laugh.

“Of course you couldn’t help it. I can’t expect to be shielded from the great army of the Sociably Inclined. And don’t think me a stuck-up, please. I’m not, really, only—alone as I am—.”

“How do you happen to be alone?” said Trent, quietly, with an earnest interest that robbed his query of rudeness.

“Why, it—it just happened—that I have to cross alone. When I arrive on the Liverpool dock, I shall be properly and correctly cared for.”

She looked out to sea as she spoke, and her reply seemed to be more to herself than to her companion.

“Please don’t think I meant to be intrusive,” he begged, and she said, quickly:

“Oh, no, I didn’t. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. I ought to have brought a maid, you see—but I didn’t. I’ll attach myself to some dear old lady, or a nice young matron, and then I’ll be all right.”

“You’re all right, anyway,” Trent told her; “as right as rain! Captain Van Winkle will find a chaperon for you, if you really want one. But why not live up to your privileges as a free young American girl, and shift for yourself?”

“Perhaps I shall.” Miss Forman still showed that preoccupied air, and Trent was not surprised when she picked up her books and things and left him with a smiling but dignified “Good morning.”

The rollicking crowd came back from their deck games, and Trent quickly immersed himself in a book and drew his cap down over his eyes.

From beneath its brim, he could see Oscar Cox pass, surrounded by laughing girls and their attendant swains.

He heard Cox saying: “—and before I leave this ship, I’ll tell you all something that will knock you silly with astonishment! By Gad, I will!”

He laughed his big, booming chuckle that was infectious if unconventional.

Oily Cox made friends right and left. And though for the moment he was the midst of a crowd of shrieking, giggling youngsters, he was quite as much at home with their dancing mothers, or with their wise, shrewd, business-like fathers.

The man had one Life Motto: Get what you want

And now, after furious struggles, he had got what he wanted, and until a time should come when he wanted something else, he was contentedly happy.

By some strange freak of Nature, Sunday morning always flies by on the wings of the wind, but Sunday afternoon, except for lovers, invariably drags.

There were no lovers, that anyone knew of, on board the Pinnacle, and Sunday afternoon was a week long.

Maisie Forman stuck to her cabin, because she didn’t want to be bothered with intrusive strangers.

Max Trent stuck to his, because he feared if he went to his deck chair, Miss Forman would think him a nuisance.

The flapper girls huddled in one or other of their cabins, comparing notes of conquest, and their adoring swains forgathered in the smoking room and pretended they were men.

Miss Gibbs wandered about to no purpose, and the big financial magnates got together and listened to one another talk business.

Oscar Cox, being the biggest and wisest, said the least.

Sherman Mason and Owen Camper, only a shade less influential in the busy marts, were nearly as silent.

Hal Mallory and Pollard Nash, scorning the younger crowd, heard with only a half interest the guarded opinions and canny advices of the Powers of Finance, and tried to urge Cox into a mood for telling funny stories.

But he was disinclined, and even made no reference to his somewhat versatile namesake nephew.

Yet, a little later, as the talk somehow drifted to superstition and the power of a curse and all that, Cox suddenly waked up.

“Nobody but a fool believes in the supernatural,” he said, dogmatically, “and only a half-wit believes in curses or charms against evil. But I will say that nearly everybody has just one little pet foolishness of that sort. Why, I know a man who goes back home if he sees a black cat on his way to business!”

“Didn’t know black cats went to business,” put in the irrepressible Mallory.

“That will be about all from you Hal Mall,” and Cox scowled in mock severity. “And my wife—dead these many years—” his voice softened, “if she put on any garment wrong side out, by chance, she wouldn’t turn it, because that meant bad luck. Nor would she let me. On two occasions I went to my office with one sock wrong side out!”

“And yet you say you’re not superstitious!” Mason exclaimed.

“That isn’t superstition—that’s marital devotion,” Cox returned. “But as I said, everybody has one little pet foible of his own, and I have mine, though it isn’t a fear to set right a shirt put on wrong side out.”

“What is it?” asked one or two, interestedly.

“Hudder,” Cox said, and though he scarcely raised his voice a note, it was a summons, and the queer little valet crept into the room.

“Get the Hand from my box, and bring it here.”

Noiselessly, the creature crept away, his soundless, slow shuffle being describable by no word other than crept.

“Ugh!” Nash said, involuntarily, “that fellow gives me the creeps! How can you stand him around?”

“Habit,” and Cox smiled. Nothing ever seemed to annoy him. “Hudder isn’t much to look at, I’ll admit, but he’s a wonder at taking care of me. And of my things. He’s valet, secretary, nurse and orderly, all in one.”

The fellow returned then, and handing something to Cox, silently departed.

“This,” and Cox laid the object on the table, “is my Hoodoo and my Mascot. If I have a small, pet bit of superstition, there it is.”

They all looked at it, and saw a bronze hand. A man’s hand, nearly life size, and of wonderful workmanship. It was a strong—diabolically strong hand, its fingers spread apart, yet partly clenched as if to clutch an enemy in a death grip. The hand was lean and sinewy; muscular, not bony, and imbued with the effect of strength and power seldom seen even in a living hand.

Yet withal, there was beauty in the design, genius in the workmanship.

And with a quick appreciation of this, Pollard Nash said, impulsively, “I bet that’s a Rodin!”

Cox flashed him a glance of approval.

“Right, my boy,” he said; “but it’s only a copy. However, it’s a faithful copy, and few could distinguish it from the original. Yes, a copy of one of Rodin’s finest studies. Look at the marvellous detail. This bronze thing has real muscle, real veins—by golly, I’ll bet it has a nervous system!”

Cox’s face was lighted up with enthusiasm, and Nash was only second in admiration. To most of the others it was merely a good-looking bronze hand, few understood its great art.

“Well,” Cox went on, “That hand is my Luck. But whether good or bad luck, I don’t know. I always keep it by me, so far it hasn’t gone back on me. I’ve snatched all I’ve wanted, along life’s pathway, and if the grip of those bronze fingers portend anything, they mean that what I’ve got I’ll keep.”

Cox’s voice was somber, now, deep as with strong emotion, yet ringing and vibrant as he brought out the last words.

A little gingerly, Mallory lifted the hand.

“Some heavy,” he said, slightly surprised at its weight.

“Yes, solid bronze is heavy. But I lug it around with me, because—well, that’s my little foolishness.”

“It’s worth while, as a work of art,” Nash said, and one or two others nodded assent. “And it’s very beautiful.”

“No,” said Owen Camper, “it’s fine, and I daresay valuable, but I don’t agree that it’s beautiful.”

“Not pleasing to the untrained eye, perhaps,” Nash returned, “but beautiful in its perfect naturalness and gripping effect of strength and—.”

“Oh, it has a gripping effect, all right,” laughed Hal. “I wouldn’t care to have it grip me! I say, Mr. Cox, if you had two of them, they’d make a wonderful pair of book-ends!”

Oscar Cox gave him a look of mild reproach, but the undismayed wag went on to say, “However, having but one, you’ll have to use it as a doorstop—fine for that, just heavy enough.”

“Shut up, Hal,” Nash said; “do you want them all to think you run a gift shop when you’re at home?”

The turned tables warded off the annoyance beginning to show in Cox’s eyes. It was plain to be seen he was sensitive about his treasure, whether superstitious or not.

For a long time Polly Nash played with the Bronze. He patted and stroked it. He gripped his own hand to the same position. He scrutinized the bronze palm, saying, “a palmist could read these lines.”

At last he gave it back to Cox, who turned it over to the hovering Hudder, and then all broke loose with their waiting questions.

“Where did he get it?” “Who made it?” “Why did he think it either lucky or unlucky?” “What was its history?”

“One at a time,” Oscar Cox begged, smiling.

“My nephew made it for me. He’s a young chap—my namesake by the way—and he’s an art student in Paris. At least, he has been a student, now he’s a sculptor. He got a chance, somehow, to copy the Rodin and, I was anxious to have it, so he gave it to me. I made it up to him, of course, and I was delighted to have it.”

“Why?”

“Just foolishness!” Cox laughed aloud. “I told you that in the first place, you remember. I think it brings me good luck—but—.”

“But it may go back on you,” suggested Camper. “In that case, would you pitch it overboard?”

“Only if I were sure that the ill luck came through the direct instrumentality of the Bronze Hand,” and Cox looked serious.

“But how do you know your good luck has come through its direct instrumentality?”

“I don’t,” and Cox beamed his sunniest smile. “But I like to think so. That’s part of the foolishness!”

“Speaking of hands,” said Mallory, “how about a game of bridge?”

A quartette was easily collected, and they went off to the card room.

Others drifted away, until only Cox and Polly Nash were left of the original group.

“And you cart that heavy thing all about?” Nash said, musingly.

“Yes—you see, it wouldn’t be a bad weapon, in case of need.”

“That’s so, too. Why are the fingers half clenched, that way? Was the original part of a whole figure?”

“That I don’t know. My nephew never told me. But the fingers aren’t clenched—or half clenched, they’re clutching. Clutching at something—.”

“Gold?” asked Nash, his imagination stirred by Cox’s intensity.

“Maybe—I don’t know. Perhaps gold—perhaps love—perhaps hate—revenge!”

Nash looked up quickly, saw the twinkle in Cox’s eyes and realized he was spoofing.

Nash laughed, too, a bit relieved at the snap of the tension.

“How little we know each other,” he said; “I never should have dreamed you had that sort of thing in your makeup, Mr. Cox.”

“No, most of our makeup doesn’t show on the outside,—unlike the ladies,” he added with a laugh.

And this effectually put an end to any further serious conversation, for Oscar Cox betook himself off, chuckling at his own jest, and Polly Nash felt an immediate need for gay companionship.