Читать книгу Seibert of the Island - Gordon Young - Страница 14

"What does Penwenn intend to do?" McGuire asked.

Nada answered, but addressed Williams: "He said that if you were arrested here, in San Francisco, a policeman or two would get all the credit. It is the credit he wants. He likes to be talked about.

"He told me that at first he planned to go on the Molly McDonald and when all the shell was on board to take you prisoner. He thought it would be a great joke, he said, to keep the shell and pearls and get the reward, too, for capturing you."

McGuire made a slight, queer, chuckling sound.

"But he said that would take two months at least, and he said that he could not take so much time away from his business. So——"

"So?" This from McGuire. Williams continued to listen as if it was of someone other than himself that she talked.

"So"—her lips moved like little ripples in the wind—"for fear you might grow suspicious or try to go away on your schooner—just slip out some night—he got you to tie up at one of his wharves. Now, he says, you can't slip away without pulling into the current with a rowboat, and he has men watching the Islander to stop you if you try to do that. And he isn't going to use the Molly McDonald at all. He is going to tell you to start first on the Islander, and the Molly McDonald will follow, but his yacht is out in the bay, and he says that it is the fastest schooner anywhere on the Pacific Coast, and he has put cannons on his yacht. 'Six pounders' he called them. And about two hours after you are outside the Golden Gate he intends to follow on his yacht, the Flying Gull, because he wants to catch you on the high seas. He told me that you did not have a cannon on your Islander, and that it would be easy."

Harshly, with distrust, Williams said: "You have his intimate confidence, it appears."

Nada's face flushed, and a wounded look came into her eyes before they glanced down for a moment to her hands. Her fingers plucked nervously at one another. Then, lifting her head, she replied: "He knows that my father is a planter, and that all planters hate you, Captain Williams. And he does like me." Quickly, defensively: "But I never, never have liked him—much. Now I hate him!"

Williams nodded once, slightly, but what he meant no one could have told; and he looked at her steadily, recalling the photograph that he had seen on Penwenn's desk.

"But how the devil," McGuire cried, "did he find out the skipper was Williams?"

"The doorman—an old sailor—knew him."

McGuire swore a mild oath, striking his knuckles against the desk top. "Your usual luck, skipper!"

Williams looked at him, then at Nada; but he said nothing, and a moment later walked away, while they followed him with their eyes. He went to the end of the enormous room and was lost in the dimness.

"What will he do?" Nada asked breathlessly.

"He'll come back pretty soon as though nothing had happened. That's about all—all you'll see, anyhow."

A small gloved hand reached McGuire's arm, gripping it; and she demanded eagerly, in whispered excitement: "But what will he do—just what?" From her early childhood she had heard stories of his daring.

McGuire smiled mistily, shaking his head and casting a gesture toward the end of the room: "There's no knowing what he is going to do—ever."

"But what do you think he might do? He will do something!"

"Oh, yes, he always does something. The Flying Gull—he knows her—is out in the bay. She is fast, isn't she? Nobody is watching her, is there? Three or four sailors on board, perhaps, but not expecting visitors, are they? Well?"

Nada's dark eyes stared at him, questioning his meaning, expecting that he would continue, say something more; then she glimpsed the idea, and cried softly: "Oh, he will steal the yacht." She was almost gleeful.

"No, no, oh, no! No—oh," said McGuire. "The skipper wouldn't do that. But since Penwenn's taken such a fancy to the Islander—why, Williams might trade with him. I've seen him do a little trading that way now and then."

"Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm Dan McGuire."

Nada regarded him with admiring surprise. She knew of him, but could never have imagined that the McGuire who sailed with Williams would be like this lazy-mannered, half-clownish fellow with a long, slightly twisted nose and drooping eyelids. In an instant he was like a friend, an old friend; he knew her island and the people that she knew, and soon she was telling him of herself. Her grey veil lay like mist on the red of the velvet hood, so demure of shape and flagrant in colour. Her voice was vibrant, eager; the words sped along as if blown by gay breath.

"Oh, dear old dad is all broken up. I haven't been home in so long I don't know what all is the matter. The first letter in months came a few days ago. He can't write, you know. Dr. Lemaitre wrote for him. Oreena married to some man that he doesn't like—I've been away so long——

"You see, father—we were little savages; I was, in any case!—sent us to Virginia, to a young ladies' seminary. It was terrible! They called us 'niggers'—those sweet, delicate Southern girls; would put handkerchiefs to their noses and turn away. Oreena nearly died, but she wouldn't say a word. I said a word—lots of words—you can just be sure! I called them—I had read in history—no Southern history though, I should say not!—how their great-great-grandmothers had been dumped on the beach like spoiled fruit because they were—well, just that! Then they almost died, those sweet, delicate girls that called us 'niggers.'

"Poor dear old dad hadn't known any better. Some stranger he had drunk with at the club had told him that we ought to be sent to Virginia, that there's where the finest ladies were. Oh, father did so want us to be ladies. I believe that man must have known just what a joke it would be for us to go there. It was a joke. I have laughed over it myself since. But Oreena, it almost killed her. She wouldn't let them know that it hurt so much, but she nearly died. I didn't cry at all. I talked back to them in good plain beachcomber English—about their grandmothers.

"We had to leave, of course. But it took so long to write father and get an answer, and they just couldn't throw us out in the street. We came on here to San Francisco and stopped with Mrs. Collins. You know of her, don't you?"

Anyone that Kate Collins liked had a good friend. She was a San Francisco woman of prominent family; and though in her younger days the family had made all the trouble that a prominent family can make when it sees the favourite daughter throwing herself away on a mere nobody, she married a young sea captain and sailed with him. When she liked anyone the world could go hang before she would change her opinion for its approval. She had often been at Pulotu, knew the Combes—knew all about them. Oreena and Nada had visited her on their way to Virginia; they stayed with her again on their return. The sisters were much alike in appearance, but Mrs. Collins loved one and intensely disliked the other. By some such artifice as only a resourceful woman could have imagined, she had induced Oreena to want to return home, and had persuaded Nada to stay on with her. This was accomplished without at all offending Oreena, otherwise Nada, who had always given up anything at any time for her sister, would not have remained.

"Oreena went home and wrote me how miserable she was. I should have gone, too, and kept her company, but I've had the most wonderful time. Kate Collins is a darling. I haven't heard from Oreena for a long, long time, but she is married—been married for months. Poor old dad is all broken up. Oreena was the pride of his life. She was so much like a fine lady, and she married a German. How father does hate Germans! Feels toward them as I do toward Southern ladies. But this one—he feels Seibert married my sister to spite him."

Nada stopped on becoming aware of Williams, who had approached unnoticed. His hands remained in his side-pockets; the visor of his cap still shadowed his eyes; but in some way, though it was by no change of expression, she knew that he was pleased with her.

McGuire turned toward him, and, half laughing in an odd way, said: "Skipper, Oreena Combe has married Seibert at Pulotu."

Williams barely nodded. He had overheard that much.

"Dr. Lemaitre wrote to me—such a funny little letter. But father is all broken up."

"He would be," said McGuire. "He'll be more broken up than that when——"

He looked toward Williams significantly, and a little amused; there was no response in the short-bearded, hard, bronzed face, and McGuire left his sentence unfinished.

McGuire thought the queer patterns that Fate made as she pushed people about were often ironically amusing; he now grinned aimlessly, merely through seeing how, because of Seibert, they had come to Penwenn, and because of Penwenn Nada had come to them, and by her coming they learned of Seibert's incomprehensible marriage. One more arc was added to this intricate circle when Williams, with a manner of stern kindliness that meant a great deal from him, asked if there was now anything that could be done for her.

At first she smiled a little, and thoughtfully said, "No, no, I think not," as if wanting it to be evident that she had been moved by no impulse but that of loyalty to him, and his friendship with her family; then suddenly, without a thought before the words were out, as if the idea was flying up from a secret place within her, she cried eagerly: "Yes. Oh, let me go home with you! I am so homesick I shall die here, and I never, never can look at Alan Penwenn again! I want to go now—with you! You will take his Flying Gull, won't you? And—please, you must let me go too!"

Ever since Dr. Lemaitre's letter, and without hardly being aware of what she was doing, Nada had been thinking of her island, of her childhood, of how she and Oreena would scramble together on a pony's back and go splashing across the stream in a runaway gallop down the palm-pillared roadway; and of how they had often climbed to the base of a hilltop rock, and lay dreamily watching the big waves that crumbled on the reefs; far-away hills would be wrapped in purple haze; below, a hundred palms would rustle their heads together, passing from one to another among themselves the gossip as told by the wind. Nada had once believed that trees talked to each other, and often lay very still, breathless, trying to overhear what they said. And her father, puttering anxiously about when he found that no one knew where the children had gone—it had been fun to hide and make him poke about and call. The great rambling house, always lonely and depressing, would now be more so; and with Oreena gone there would be no one there but her father, and the servants never paid attention to him. Nada wanted to go home.

Williams regarded her with inscrutable severity, unaware, of course, that McGuire had suggested the Flying Gull to her. Perhaps he felt that her readiness to discover the way that he would leave confirmed her right to go, and it may be that he also had Penwenn, and Penwenn's chagrin, in mind when his head moved faintly toward her, nodding assent.