"Which is as much as to say that I have an agreeable and interesting way of lying. Is that what you wish to imply, Mrs. Spofford?"
"Not at all. I say you are adroit because you place me in an embarra.s.sing position. If I believe your confession that you come of bad stock, I must also believe that you come of an exceedingly good old Maryland family." He bowed very low. "My niece, Mr. Percival, is an orphan. I am and have been her protector since she was fourteen years of age. She is the possessor of a large fortune in her own right. Her father,--who was my brother,--gave her into my care when he was on his death-bed. I leave you to surmise just what were his dying words to me.
She was his idol. I have not failed him in any respect. You ask me to give my consent to your marriage. I cannot do so. No doubt you will be married, just as you have planned. She loves you. I have known it for months. I have seen this day and hour coming,--yes, I have seen it even more clearly than she, for while she struggled desperately to deceive herself she has never been able to deceive me. You are a strong, attractive man. The glamour of mystery rests upon you. You have done prodigious deeds here, Mr. Percival. All of this I recognize, and I should be unfair to my own sense of honour were I to deny you my respect and grat.i.tude. I must be fair. Fear has been the cause of my att.i.tude toward you,--not fear of you, sir, but fear for my niece. Now I am confronted by the inevitable. The thing I have tried so hard to avoid has come to pa.s.s. In these circ.u.mstances, I am forced to confess that I have not been without a real, true admiration for you. I admit that I have felt a great security with you in command of our camp. But, even so, you are not the man I would have chosen to be Ruth"s husband. The time is surely coming when we will be delivered from this island prison, when we will return to the life and the people and the conditions we knew before catastrophe made a new world for us. I am thinking of that time, Mr. Percival, and not of the present. I fear my niece is thinking only of the present and not of the future."
He had listened with grave deference. "Forgive me if I appear impertinent, Mrs. Spofford, but is it not, after all, the past you are thinking about?"
She did not answer at once. His question had startled her.
"Youth does not live in the past," he went on quietly. "It deals only with the present. I love Ruth Clinton,--I love her with the cleanest love a man can feel for a woman. It will not alter when we leave this island. If we are fated to spend the rest of our lives here, it will endure to the end."
"You are speaking for yourself," she said. "Can you speak for Ruth?"
"No, I cannot," he admitted. "Nor can you," he added boldly. "That is what I meant when I asked if you were not thinking chiefly of the past.
I cannot say that Ruth will love me always, but I can say this: she loves me now, as I love her, and in her heart she has said just what I said to you a moment ago,--that her love will endure."
"I daresay I do think more of the past than of the present, Mr.
Percival. You are right about the future. It is a blank page, to be glorified or soiled by what is set down upon it. Fate has thrown you two together. Perhaps it was so written in the past that you despise.
A single turn of the mysterious wheel of fortune brought you into her life. Half a turn,--the matter of minutes,--and you would never have seen each other, and you would have gone your separate ways to the end of time without even knowing that the other existed. No doubt you both contend that you cannot live without each other. It is the usual wail of lovers. But are you quite as certain in your minds that you would have perished if you had never seen each other?"
The note of irony did not escape him. He smiled. "In that case, Mrs.
Spofford, we should not have existed at all."
She shook her head despairingly. "You are too clever for me," she said.
"I warn you, however, that I shall do everything in my power to persuade Ruth to reconsider her promise to you."
"Nothing could be fairer than that," said he, without rancor. "If she comes to me this afternoon and says she has changed her mind and cannot marry me, I shall not ask her again. Will you be kind enough, Mrs.
Spofford, to include that in your argument? It may spare her a lot of worry and anxiety."
He bowed ceremoniously and took his departure. She went to the window and, drawing aside the curtain, watched him until he disappeared down the road. Then, as the curtain fell into place, she said to herself:
"Their children will be strong and beautiful."
CHAPTER XIV.
A fortnight later, Ruth and Percival were married. He was now governor of Trigger Island.
The ceremony took place at noon on the Green in front of the Government Building,--(an imposing name added to the already extensive list by which the "meeting-house" was known),--and was attended by the whole population of the island. His desire for a simple wedding had been vigorously, almost violently opposed by the people. Led by Randolph Fitts and the eloquent Malone, they demanded the pomp and ceremony of a state wedding. As governor of Trigger Island, they clamoured, it was his duty to be married in the presence of a mult.i.tude! A general holiday was declared, a great "barbecue" was arranged--(minus the roasted ox),--and when it was all over, the joyous throng escorted the governor and his lady to the gaily decorated "barge" that was to transport them from the landing to the Doraine.
Olga Obosky made the bride"s bonnet and veil, and draped the latter on the morning of the wedding day. Like the fabled merchants of the Arabian Nights she appeared to the bride-elect and displayed her wares. From the depths of her theatre trunks she produced a bewildering a.s.sortment of laces, chiffon, silks, and the filmiest of gauzes.
"You must not be afraid zat they will contaminate you," she explained, noting the look of dismay in Ruth"s eyes. "Zey have never adorned my body, zey have never been expose to the speculating eye of the public, zey have not hid from view these charms of mine. No, these are fair and virtuous fabrics. It is you who will be the first to wear them, my friend. Take your choice. See! Zis piece, is it not wonderful? It comes from Buda Pesth. One day it would perhaps have caressed my flesh in the Dance of the Sultan"s Dream,--but, alas,--zat is not to be. Feel, my friend,--take it in your hand. See? You could hide it in the palm of one of them,--and presto! Throw it outspread,--and it is like a blanket of mist filling the room. It is priceless. It is un.o.btainable. None except Obosky can afford to dance in such imperial stuff as this. Take it,--it is yours. It is my pleasure that you should have it. Better far it should be your bridal veil than to drape these abandoned legs of mine."
And so it was that the scant costume of the Sultan"s Dream became the bridal veil of the governor"s lady.
If Olga Obosky was sore at heart, she gave no sign. On the contrary, she revealed the sprightliest interest in the coming nuptials. Percival himself had told her the news within the hour after his interview with Mrs. Spofford. In his blind happiness, he had failed to notice the momentary stiffening of her body as if resisting a shock; he did not see the hurt, baffled look that darkened her eyes for a few seconds, and the swiftly pa.s.sing pallor that stole into her face and vanished almost instantly. He saw only the challenging smile that followed close upon these fleeting signs, and the mocking gleam in her eyes.
"So?" she had said. "So the citadel is yours, my friend. Hail to the chief! I salute you. But consider, O conqueror, what it is you are about to do. You are setting a woeful example. There will be a stampede, a panic. People will trample each other under foot in ze mad rush for captivity. The wedding bell will crack under ze strain of so much ringing. Everybody will be getting married, now zat they find it is so easy and so simple. I congratulate you, my friend. You have been very slow,--I have said she was yours for the asking, you will remember. She is good, she is beautiful, she is pure gold, my friend. I am her friend.
Do not ever forget, my Percivail, I am her friend."
He flushed warmly. He could not misinterpret her meaning. She spoke slowly, deliberately. It was renunciation on her part.
"I understand, Olga," he said.
She smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, but you do not understand!" she cried. "You are so very much perplexed. It is enough for me that you are perplexed. I am content. I am the puzzle you will never solve. So! La la! You will never cease to wonder. Look!"
She pointed her finger at a man who was crossing the Green below them.
"I am a puzzle to zat man also. He thought that he understood."
"Landover? What do you mean?"
A spasm of fury transformed her features. She hissed out the words:
"I did spit in his face last night,--zat is all."
The thirteenth of April, 1918, came on Sat.u.r.day. Defying superst.i.tion, Ruth selected it as her wedding day. It was a bright, warm autumn day, bestowed by a gallant sun, and there was great rejoicing over this evidence of G.o.d"s approval. It came as a winter"s whim, for that night the skies were black and thunderous; the winds roared savagely between the lofty walls of Split Mountain and whined across the decks of the slanting Doraine, snug in the little basin, while out on the boundless deep the turmoil of h.e.l.l was raging.
And so began the honeymoon of the stowaway and the lady fair, even as the "voyage" of the jockey and his bride had begun a fortnight before.
They sat at the Captain"s table in the ghostly, dismantled saloon. Above them hung two brightly burnished lanterns, shedding a mellow light upon the festal board. Outside, the whistling wind, the swish of the darkened waters, the rattle of davits and the creak of the straining timbers.
Up from his place at the head of the table rose the gray and gallant skipper.
"Up, gentlemen," said he, his face aglow. "I give you the health, the happiness and the never diminishing glory of the governor"s lady."
"May she never be less," added the gaunt First Officer, who spent his days ash.o.r.e watching the growth of a new Doraine and his nights on board with the failing master of the older one.
And in the rare old port from the Captain"s locker they pledged the radiant bride.
"A long voyage and a merry one!" cried Mr. Codge, the purser, as he drained his goblet dry.
Mr. Furman Nicholas Chizler bowed very gravely to the lady on the Captain"s right, and then to the one at his left.
"What care we which way we sail so long as the wind"s behind us?" quoth he.
BOOK THREE