Books: Love, The Fiddler
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Lloyd Osbourne >> Love, The Fiddler
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"Muravief would never do that," he would say. "He is
constitutionally inert, and his imagination has carried him
through too many unfought wars for him to throw down the gage now.
He smokes cigarettes and dreams of endless peace. I had many talks
with him last year and found him impatient of any subject but the
redemption of the paper rouble!"
But his mind had never crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He still
thought that the Civil War had been between North and South
America. To him the United States was a vague region peopled with
miners, pork-packers, and Indians; a jumble of factories, forests,
and red-shirted men digging for gold, all of it fantastically seen
through the medium of Buffalo Bill's show. It was a constant
wonder to him that such conditions had been able to produce a
woman like Florence Fenacre.
"You are the flower of ze prairie," he would say, "an atavism of
type, harking back a dozen generations to aristocratic
progenitors, having nothing in common with the Pathfinder your
Papa!"
"He wasn't a pathfinder," said Florence, "he was a whaler
captain."
But this to the count seemed only the more remarkable. He raised
the fabric of a fresh romance on the instant, especially (on
Florence telling him more about her forebears) when he began to
mix up the Pilgrim Fathers, the Revolutionary War, and the Alabama
in one brisk panorama of his ever dear "Far Vest"!
Florence's acquaintance with the comte de Souvary went back to
Majorca, where, in the course of one of those sudden blows, so
common on the Mediterranean, their respective yachts had fled for
shelter. His own was a large auxiliary schooner called the
Paquita, a lofty, showy vessel which he sailed himself with his
usual courage and audacity. He had the reputation of scaring his
unhappy guests--when any were bold enough to accept his
invitations--to within the proverbial inch of their lives; and
they usually changed "ze sensation" for the nearest mail-boat
home. Florence and he had struck up a warm friendship from the
start, and for the whole summer their vessels were inseparable,
sailing everywhere in company and anchoring side by side.
The count had a way of courtship peculiarly his own. He made it
apparent from the first how deeply he had been stirred by
Florence's beauty and how ready he was to offer her his hand; but
as a matter of fact he never did so in set terms, and treated her
more as a comrade than a divinity. He talked of his own devotion
to her as something detached and impersonal, willing as much as
she to laugh over it and treat it lightly. He was never jealous,
never exacting, and seemed to be as happy to share her with others
as when he had her all alone in one of their tete-a-tetes. What he
coveted most of all was her intimacy, her confidence, the frank
expression of her own true self; and in this exchange he was
willing to give as much as he received and often more. Sometimes
she was piqued at his apparent indifference--at his lack of any
stronger feeling for her--seeming to detect in him something of
her own insouciance and coldness.
"You really don't care for me a bit," she said once. "I am only
another form of 'ze sensation'--like going up in a balloon or
riding on the cow-catcher."
"I keep myself well in hand," he returned. "I am not approaching
the terrible age of forty without knowing a little at least about
women and their ways."
"A little!" she exclaimed ironically. "You know enough to write a
book!"
"Zat book has taught me to go very slow," he said. "Were I in my
young manhood I'd come zoop, like that, and carry you off in ze
Far Vest style. But I can never hope to be that again with any
woman; my decreasing hair forbids, if nozing else--but my way is
to make myself indispensable--ze old dog, ze old standby, as you
Americans say--the good old harbour to which you will come at last
when tired of ze storms outside!"
"Your humility is a new trait," said Florence.
"It's none ze less real because it is often hid," said the count.
"I watch you very closely, more closely than perhaps you even
think. You have all the heartlessness of youth and health and
beauty. I would be wrong to put my one little piece of money on
the table and lose all; and so I save and save, and play ze only
game that offers me the least chance--ze waiting game!"
"I believe that's true," said Florence.
"Were I to act ze distracted lover, you would laugh in my face,"
he went on earnestly. "Were I to propose and be refused, my pride
would not let me--my instinct as gentleman would not let me--go
trailing after you with my long face. The idyll would be over. I
would go!"
"There are times when I think a heap of you," said Florence
encouragingly.
"Oh, I know so well how it would be," he continued. "A week of
doubt--of fever; a rain of little notes; and then with your good
clear honest Far Vest sense you would say: No, mon cher, it is
eempossible!"
"Yes, I suppose I would," said Florence.
"I would rather be your friend all my life," said the count, "than
to be merely one of the rejected. I have no ambition to place my
name on that already great list. I have never yet asked a woman to
marry me, and when I do I care not for the expectation of being
refused!"
"You are like all Europeans," said Florence, "you believe in a
sure thing."
"My heart is not on my sleeve," he returned, "and I value it too
highly to lose it without compensation."
"It is interesting to hear all your views," said Florence. "I am
sure I appreciate the compliment highly. It's a new idea, this of
the wolf making a confidant of the lamb."
"Oh, my dear!" he broke out, "I am only a poor devil holding back
from committing a great stupidity."
"Is that how you describe marrying me?" she said lightly.
"Ze day will come," he said, disregarding her question, "I think
it will--I hope it will--when you will say to me: My dear fellow,
I am tired of all this fictitious gaiety; of all this rush and
bustle and flirtation; of this life of fever and emptiness. I long
for peace and do not know where to find it. I am like a piece of
music to whom one waits in vain for the return to the keynote.
Tell me where to find it or else I die!"
"Rather forward of me to say all that, Count," observed the girl.
"But suppose I did--what then?"
The count opened wide his arms.
"I would answer: here!" he said.
V
Thus the bright days passed, amid animating scenes, with memories
of sky and cloud and noble headlands and stately, beautiful ships.
Like two ocean sweethearts the Minnehaha and the Paquita took
their restless way together, side by side in port, inseparable at
sea. At night the one lit the other's road with a string of ruby
lanterns and kept the pair in company across the dark and silent
water. Their respective crews, not behindhand in this splendid
camaraderie of ships, fraternised in wine-shops and strolled
through the crooked foreign streets arm in arm. Breton and
American, red cap and blue, sixty of the one and eighty of the
other--they were brothers all and cemented their friendship in
blood and gunpowder, in tattooed names, flags and mottoes, after
the time-honoured and artless manner of the sea.
In the drama of life it is often the least important actors who
are happiest, and the stars themselves are not always to be the
most envied. Florence, torn between her ambition and her love,
knew what it was to toss all night on her sleepless bed and wet
the pillow with her tears. De Souvary, who found himself every day
deeper in the toils of his ravishing American, chafed and
struggled with unavailing pangs; and as for Frank Rignold, he
endured long periods of black depression as he watched from afar
the steady progress of his rival's suit; and his moody face grew
moodier and exasperation rose within him to the rebellion point.
By September the two yachts were lying in Cowes, and already there
was some talk of winter plans and a possible voyage to India. The
count was enthusiastic about the project, as he was about anything
that could keep him and Florence together, and he had ordered a
stack of books and spent hours at a time with the mistress of the
Minnehaha reading over Indian Ocean directories and plotting
imaginary courses on the chart.
With the prospect of so extended a trip before him, Frank found
much to be done in the engine-room, for their suggested cruise
would be likely to carry them far out of the beaten track, and he
had to be prepared for all contingencies. A marine engine requires
to be perpetually tinkered, and an engineer's duty is not only to
run it, but to make good the little defects and breakdowns that
are constantly occurring. Frank was a daily visitor at the local
machine-shop, and his business engagements with Mr. Derwent, the
proprietor, led insensibly to others of the social kind.
Derwent's house was close by his works, and Frank's trips ashore
soon began to take in both. Derwent had a daughter, a black-
haired, black-eyed, pink-cheeked girl, named Cassie, one of those
vigorous young English beauties that men would call stunning and
women bold. She did not wait for any preliminaries, but
straightway fell in love with the handsome American engineer that
her father brought home. She made her regard so plain that Frank
was embarrassed, and was not a bit put off at his reluctance to
play the part she assigned to him.
"That's always my luck," she remarked with disarming candour, "a
poor silly fool who always likes them that don't like me and
spurns them that do!" And then she added, with a laugh, that he
ought to be tied up, "for you are a cruel handsome man, Frank, and
my heart goes pitapat at the very sight of you!"
She called him Frank at the second visit; and at the third seated
herself on the arm of his chair and took his hand and held it.
"Can't you ever forget that girl in Yankee-land?" she said. "She
ain't here, is she, and why shouldn't you steal a little harmless
fun? There's men who'd give their little finger to win a kiss from
me--and you sit there so glum and solemn, who could have a bushel
for the asking!"
For all Frank's devotion to Florence he could not but be flattered
at being wooed in this headlong fashion. He was only a man after
all, and she was the prettiest girl in port. He did not resist
when she suddenly put her arms around him and pressed his head
against her bosom, calling him her boy and her darling; but
remained passive in her embrace, pleased and yet ashamed, and
touched to the quick with self-contempt.
"You mustn't," he said, freeing himself. "Cassie, it's wrong--it's
dreadful. You mustn't think I love you, because I don't."
"Yes, but I am going to make you," she said with splendid
effrontery, looking at herself in the glass and patting her
rumpled hair. "See what you have done to me, you bad boy!"
Had she been older or more sophisticated, Frank would have been
shocked at this reversal of the sexes. But in her self-avowed and
unashamed love for him she was more like a child than a woman; and
her good-humour and laughter besides seemed somehow to belittle
her words and redeem the affair from any seriousness. Frank tried
to stay away, for his conscience pricked him and he did not care
to drift into such an unusual and ambiguous relation with
Derwent's handsome daughter. But Cassie was always on the watch
for him and he could not escape from the machine-works without
falling into one of her ambushes. She would carry him off to tea,
and he never left without finding himself pledged to return in the
evening. In his loneliness, hopelessness, and desolation he found
it dangerously sweet to be thus petted and sought after. Cassie
made no demands of him and acquiesced with apparent cheerfulness
in the implication that he loved another woman. She humbly
accepted the little that was left over, and, though she wept many
hot tears in secret, outwardly at least she never rebelled or
reproached him. She knew that to do either would be to lose him.
In fact she made it very easy for him to come, and gave up her
girlish treasure of affection without any hope of reward. Frank,
by degrees, discovered a wonderful comfort in being with her. It
was balm to his wounds and bruises; and, like someone who had long
been out in the cold, he warmed himself, so to speak, before that
bright fire, and found himself growing drowsy and contented.
It must not be supposed that all this went on unremarked, or that
in the gossip of the yacht Frank and Cassie Derwent did not come
in for a considerable share of attention. It passed from the
officers' mess to the saloon, and Florence bit her lip with anger
and jealousy when the joke went round of the chief engineer's
"infatuation." In revenge she treated Frank more coldly than ever,
and went out of her way to be agreeable to de Souvary, especially
when the former was at hand and could be made a spectator of her
lover-like glances and a warmth that seemed to transcend the
limits of ordinary friendship. She made herself utterly unhappy
and Frank as well. The only one of the trio to be pleased was the
count.
She made no objection when Frank asked her permission to show the
ship to Derwent and his daughter.
"You must be sure and introduce me," she said, with a sparkle of
her eyes that Frank was too unpresumptuous to understand. "They
say that she is a raving little beauty and that you are the happy
man!"
Frank hurriedly disclaimed the honour.
"Oh, no!" he said. "But she is really very sweet and nice, and I
think we owe a little attention to her father."
"Oh, her FATHER!" said Florence, sarcastically emphasising the
word.
"I hope you don't think there is anything in it," he exclaimed
very anxiously. "I suppose there has been some tittle-tattle--I
can read it in your face--but there's not a word of truth in it,
not a word, I assure you."
"I don't care the one way or other, Frank," she said. "You needn't
explain so hard. What does it matter to me, anyway?" and with that
she turned away to cordially greet the count as he came aboard.
The two women met in the saloon. Florence at once assumed the
great lady, the heiress, the condescending patrician; Cassie
flushed and trembled; and in a buzz of commonplaces the stewards
served tea while the two women covertly took each other's measure.
Florence grew ashamed of her own behavior, and, unbending a
little, tried to put her guests at ease and led Cassie on to talk.
Then it came out about the dance that Derwent and his daughter
were to give the following night.
"Frank and me have been arranging the cotillon," said Cassie, and
then she turned pink to her ears at having called him by his first
name before all those people. "I mean Mr. Rignold," she added,
amid everyone's laughter and her own desperate confusion.
Florence's laughter rang out as gaily as anyone's, and apparently
as unaffectedly, and she rallied Cassie with much good humour on
her slip.
"So it's Frank already!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Miss Derwent! don't
you trust this wicked chief of mine. He is a regular heart-
breaker!"
Cassie cried when Frank and she returned home and sat together on
the porch.
"She's a proud, haughty minx," she burst out, "and you love her--
and as for me I might as well drown myself."
Frank attempted to comfort her.
"Oh, you needn't try to blind me," she said bitterly. "I--I
thought it was a girl in America, Frank, a girl like me--just
common and poor and perhaps not as nice as I am. And you know she
wouldn't wipe her feet on you," she went on viciously--"she so
grand with her yachts and her counts and 'Oh, I think I'll run
over to Injya for the winter, or maybe it's Cairo or the Nile,'
says she! What kind of a chance have you got there, Frank, you in
your greasy over-alls and working for her wages? Won't you break
your heart just like I am breaking mine, I that would sell the
clothes off my back for you and follow you all over the world!"
Frank protested that she was mistaken; that it wasn't Miss Fenacre
at all; that it was absurd to even think of such a thing.
"Oh, Frank, it's bad enough as it is without your lying to me,"
she said, quite unconvinced. "You've set your eyes too high, and
unhappiness is all that you'll ever get from the likes of her.
You're a fool in your way and I'm a fool in mine, and maybe when
she's married to the count and done for, you'll mind the little
girl that's waiting for you in Cowes!" She took his hand and
kissed it, telling him with a sob that she would ever remain
single for his sake.
"But I don't want you to, Cassie," he said. "You're talking like a
baby. What's the good of waiting when I am never coming back?"
"You say that now," she exclaimed, "but my words will come back to
you in Injya when you grow tired of her ladyship's coldness and
disdain; and I'm silly enough to think you'll find them a comfort
to you out there, with nothing to do but to think and think, and
be miserable."
VI
The next day he found Cassie in a more cheerful humour and excited
about the dance. The house was all upset and she was busy with a
dozen of her girl friends in decorating the hall and drawing-room,
taking up the carpets, arranging for the supper and the
cloakrooms, and immersed generally in the thousand and one tasks
that fall on a hostess-to-be. Frank put himself at her orders and
spent the better part of the afternoon in running errands and
tacking up flags and branches; and after an hilarious tea, in the
midst of all the litter and confusion, he went back to the ship
somewhat after five o'clock. As he was pulled out in a shore boat
he was surprised to pass a couple of coal lighters coming from the
Minnehaha, and to see her winches busily hoisting in stores from a
large launch alongside. He ran up the ladder, and seeing the
captain asked him what was up.
"Sailing orders, Chief," said Captain Landry, enjoying his
amazement. "We'll be off the ground in half an hour, eastward
bound!" "But I wasn't told anything," cried Frank. "I never got
any orders."
"The little lady said you wasn't to be disturbed," said the
captain, "and she took it on herself to order your staff to go
ahead. I guess you'll find a pretty good head of steam already!"
Frank ran to the side and called back his boat, giving the man
five shillings to take a note at once to Cassie. He had no time
for more than a few lines, but he could not go to sea without at
least one word of farewell. They were cutting the anchor and were
already under steerage way when Cassie came off herself in a
launch and passed up a letter directed to the chief engineer. It
reached him in the engine-room, where he, not knowing that she was
but a few feet distant, was spared the sight of her pale and
despairing face.
The letter itself was almost incoherent. She knew, she said, whom
she had to thank for his departure. That vixen, that hussy, that
stuck-up minx, who treated him like a dog and yet grudged him to
another, who, God help her, loved him too well for her own good--
it was her ladyship she had to thank for spoiling everything and
carrying him away. Was he not man enough to assert himself and
leave a ship where he was put upon so awful? Let him ask her
mightiness in two words, yes or no; and then when he had come down
from the clouds and had learned the truth, poor silly fool--then
let him come back to his Cassie, who loved him so dear, and who
(if she did say it herself) had a heart worth fifty of his
mistress and didn't need no powder to set off her complexion. It
ended with a piteous appeal to his compassion and besought him to
write to her from the nearest port.
Frank sighed as he read it. Everything in the world seemed wrong
and at cross-purposes. Those who had one thing invariably longed
for something else, and there was no content or happiness or
satisfaction anywhere. The better off were the acquiescent, who
took the good and the bad with the same composure and found their
only pleasure in their work. Best off of all were the dead whose
sufferings were over. But after all it was sweet to be loved, even
if one did not love back, and Frank was very tender with the
little letter and put it carefully in his pocket-book. Yes, it was
sweet to be loved. He said this over and over to himself, and
wondered whether Florence felt the same to him as he did to
Cassie. It seemed to explain so much. It seemed the key to her
strange regard for him. He asked himself whether it could be true
that she had wilfully ordered the ship to sea in order to prevent
him going to the dance. The thought stirred him inexpressibly.
What other explanation was there if this was not the one? And she
had deserted the count, who was away in London on a day's
business; deserted the Paquita at anchor in the roads! He was
frightened at his own exultation. Suppose he were wrong in this
surmise! Suppose it were just another of her unaccountable
caprices!
They ran down Channel at full speed and at night were abreast of
the Scilly lights, driving towards the Bay of Biscay in the teeth
of an Equinoctial gale. At the behest of one girl eighty men had
to endure the discomfort of a storm at sea, and a great steel
ship, straining and quivering, was flung into the perilous night.
It seemed a misuse of power that, at a woman's whim, so many lives
and so noble and costly a fabric could be risked--and risked for
nothing. From the captain on the bridge, dripping in his oil-
skins, to the coal-passers and firemen below who fed the mighty
furnaces, to the cooks in the galley, the engineers, the
electrician on duty, the lookout man in the bow clinging to the
life-line when the Minnehaha buried her nose out of sight--all
these perforce had to endure and suffer at Florence's bidding
without question or revolt.
Frank's elation passed and left him in a bitter humour towards
her. It was not right, he said to himself, not right at all. She
ought to show a little consideration for the men who had served
her so well and faithfully. Besides, it was unworthy of her to
betray such pettiness and spoil Cassie's dance. He felt for the
girl's humiliation, and, though not in love with her, he was
conscious of a sentiment that hated to see her hurt. He would not
accept Florence's invitation to dine in the saloon, sending word
that he had a headache and begged to be excused; and after dinner,
when she sought him out on deck and tried to make herself very
sweet to him, he was purposely reserved and distant, and look the
first opportunity to move away. He was angry, disheartened, and
resentful, all in one.
Towards eleven o'clock at night as Frank was in the engine-room,
moodily turning over these reflections in his mind and listening
to the race of the screws as again and again they were lifted out
of the water and strained the shafts and engines to the utmost, he
was surprised to see Florence herself descending the steel ladder
into that close atmosphere of oil and steam. He ran to help her
down, and taking her arm led her to one side, where they might be
out of the way. Here, in the glare of the lanterns, he looked down
into her face and thought again how beautiful she was. Her cheek
was wet with spray, and her hair was tangled and glistening
beneath her little yachting cap. She seemed to exhale a breath of
the storm above and bring down with her something of the gale
itself. She held fast to Frank as the ship laboured and plunged,
smiling as their eyes met.
"You are the last person I expected down here," said Frank.
"I was beginning to get afraid," she returned. "It's blowing
terribly, Frank--and I thought, if anything happened, I'd like to
be with you!"
"Oh, we are all right!" said Frank, his professional spirit
aroused. "With twin screws, twin engines, and plenty of sea-room--
why, let it blow."
His confidence reassured her. He never appeared to her so strong,
so self-reliant and calm as at that moment of her incipient fear.
Amongst his engines Frank always wore a masterful air, for he had
that instinct for machinery peculiarly American, and was competent
almost to the point of genius.
"Besides, I wanted to ask you a question," said Florence. "I had
to ask it. I couldn't sleep without asking it, Frank."
"I would have come, if you had sent for me," he said.
"I couldn't wait for that," she returned. "I knew it might be hard
for you to leave--or impossible."
"What is it, Florence?" he asked. The name slipped out in spite of
him.
She looked at him strangely, her lustrous eyes wide open and
bright with her unsaid thoughts.
"Are you very fond of her, Frank?" she asked.
"Her? Who?" he exclaimed. "You don't mean Cassie Derwent?"
"Yes," she said.
"Of course I'm fond of her," he said.
"More than you are of me, Frank?" she persisted.
"Oh, it isn't the same sort of thing, Florence," he said. "I never
even thought of comparing you and her together. Surely you know
that? Surely you understand that?"
"You used to--to love me once, Frank," she said, with a stifled
sob. "Has she made it any less? Has she robbed me, Frank? Have I
lost you without knowing it?"
"No," he said, "no, a thousand times, no!"
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