The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Crusader's Casket/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
CAPTAIN JIMMY escorted the bewildered Miss Tommie down to his cabin, told her to use it and retired to give her an opportunity to rearrange her somewhat disordered attire. He returned to the deck and climbed to the bridge, where he found Barton and saw that the ship was making full speed through the still night. Already the illuminations of Venice and the fête were dropping behind. Barton made way for him as if for his superior officer and Jimmy smiled.
“I suppose you understand you are master of the ship now, and duly registered as such,” he said. “Have you any objections to taking two passengers to Spalato?”
Barton grinned appreciatively and shook his head.
“So many strange things are happening that I'm getting used to anything,” he remarked. “But, to tell the truth, sir, when I got that letter of yours I didn't quite know what to make of it!”
“What's that? Letter from me? I have written you no letter.”
Barton pulled from the inner pocket of his coat an envelope and handed it to Jimmy, who took it inside the chart house and spread it under the chart lamp, frowning in bewilderment. It was typewritten, even to the signature, and a most extraordinary epistle which read:
Captain Barton,
S. S. Adventure.
You will please weigh anchor at eleven o'clock this evening, see that steam is up and have everything ready for immediate sailing when I come aboard with a lady passenger, Miss Tania Powell. You may expect us between eleven and twelve o'clock, midnight, although it is possible that we may be detained somewhat later. Miss Powell's luggage will come aboard shortly before our arrival. James Ware.
Jimmy took off his hat, laid it on the table and read the letter again. Barton, standing behind him said, apologetically, “When I got it, sir, I didn't quite know what to make of it. It didn't sound like you, and to order the anchor brought aboard, leaving the ship to hold her place with the engines when the tide was on the turn sounded so—well—I beg pardon, sir—so unseamanlike—and then there was that typewritten signature, too. Honestly, if you hadn't given me orders to clear to-night I don't think I'd have paid any attention to this until I hunted you up and made certain that it was you who wrote it.”
“I didn't write it,” Jimmy said, still staring at the letter. Then suddenly he turned and asked: “About the lady's luggage—did it come aboard?”
“Yes, sir. A suit case and a trunk. I had them taken to your cabin. There was a note and, I think, some keys in an envelope addressed to Miss Powell, sir, that I laid on top of the trunk so she could be certain to find it.”
“Well, I'll be hanged!” was all Jimmy could say, as he still stood there stupefied by surprise and striving to conjecture how all this could have come about.
“Who brought the lady's luggage?” he asked.
“The regular gondolier from the hotel—or at least the man wore one of the hotel sweaters and caps.”
“All right! I don't understand it, and I didn't write the letter, but—well, it has helped, Barton. It has helped! No one was ever more glad to get under way quickly than I was when I came aboard. You can bet on that. But you are master of the ship and—I'm going below to see if our passenger is comfortable. Is everything in my work cabin behind the chart house ready for my use?”
“I saw to that, sir, as soon as I got the letter saying that your suite below was to be given to the young lady.”
“That, too, is good,” Jimmy said as he slowly and thoughtfully turned, descended the bridge stairs and walked aft. He did not immediately go below, but stood at the stern, leaning over the rail, watching the last of the Venetian lights grow dim and endeavoring to work out this inexplicable puzzle. Finally abandoning it, he descended to his sumptuous quarters aft and rapped gently upon the panel of the door. It opened almost immediately, but he was aware that it had been locked.
“Come in,” a cold voice bade him and when he entered he saw the girl, now clad in a tailor-made skirt that evidently had been slipped on over the knickers, in fact, the same costume in which she had been garbed in the early hours of that evening when their adventure began. In her hand she held some receipted hotel bills, some currency and a bunch of keys. He saw a different girl than he had known, one who was extremely calm and decidedly cool, but who was palpably angry. It was as if the fighting blood of her clan were afire and she very dangerous. His eyes swept past her and he saw on top of the piano in his miniature salon the golden box, glittering dully, occupying. a place all to itself, as if it malignantly leered upon them and waited for the outcome. His eyes came back to meet hers as she still stood there, quietly, and somewhat sternly waiting.
“Well,” she said, “I am waiting for your explanation!”
“Explanation? Explanation of what, Miss Powell?” he asked.
“Of this,” she said, gesturing toward the suit case and trunk. “And of these receipted bills from my hotel. And of who, and what you are, and what you expect, or hope to accomplish by”
“Good Lord! Tommie! You don't think I had anything to do with all that, do you?” he cried. “I'm as much in the dark about it all as you are. I swear I am!”
There was such unmistakable sincerity in his attitude and such shocked appeal in his voice that she relented ever so slightly and her look of anger gave way to one of astonishment that was yet on guard and doubting.
“If you didn't pay my hotel bill, and write a letter to the hotel management telling them that I was unexpectedly called away, couldn't return, and asking the hotel to have a maid pack my stuff and send it aboard with the keys, who did?” she demanded. “Why, the hotel even returned me two thousand eight hundred and fifty-six lire which they said was in excess of my bill!”
“I don't know anything about it,” Jimmy declared, alarmed and distressed by this peculiar predicament.
“But you brought me here—to this ship,” she insisted. “And you seem to be known here. Can you explain that?”
“Yes,” he said gravely, “I can. I haven't lied to you, but I may have deceived you a little bit. No—not about that baggage, and the hotel, and all that; for of that I am as ignorant as are you.”
“Pfaugh! If you'd deceive me about one thing I can't see why you wouldn't about another!” she exclaimed, snapping her fingers and turning half from him with a gesture of contempt.
“But you'll hear me confess about the—er—in what way I have deceived you, will you not?” he pleaded. “That's only fair play, isn't it?”
“I suppose it is,” she admitted, but in a way which predicated her doubts of anything he might have to offer.
“May I sit down to do it?” he asked, his sense of the absurd and ridiculous coming to his assistance, and also a desire to gain a moment's time to think.
“I don't see why you shouldn't,” she said, with the same contained coldness. “I presume from the photographs I've seen, and your name on the music, and on the fly leaves of books, that you are master here. The place appears to be yours.”
“Thank you,” he said, secretly elated by the knowledge that her curiosity had at least led her to an inspection of his premises, and walked across and sat down in the depths of his favorite easy-chair as if by its comforting associations to find assistance in his hour of trouble. “And you—won't you sit down until we can get this matter straightened out?”
She seated herself on the top of her trunk, as if scorning to use anything but her own property for such a purpose. One of her trim feet was clear of the floor and she could reach it only with the toe of the other thin, shapely shoe. With it she tapped the rug beneath, impatiently, as she faced him.
“I am listening,” she reminded him.
“Well,” he said dubiously, and still distressed, “I may as well tell the whole thing, mayn't I? I don't see any other way out of it. 'Pon honor I don't! But first of all I'll tell you I never expected to bring you here to this ship, and I had nothing whatever to do with your baggage being brought here, or your hotel bill being paid, and I have never had any desire to take advantage of you—in any way. Good heavens! I'd give this ship, right now, to have everything as it was a day or two ago.”
“Then you own it, do you?” she asked with an unescapable sarcasm in her voice.
“Yes, I own the Adventure. She's mine. My hobby. My ship. I live on her most of the time. And I've lived on her for more than three years, and I love her, too, Miss Powell. You can understand how a man can love a ship, can't your No—I don't suppose you can.”
He stopped, bent forward after one comprehensive glance about his possessions and home, and without lifting his eyes went on, as if carefully reviewing all that had taken place between them, “I saw you over there on the first night the Adventure came to this port—over there at the hotel—and—I wished that we were friends. I was very lonesome. Then I went down to the Square there in Venice and heard that boy Pietro talking to a friend, that fellow Giuseppe, and he was talking about the Crusader's Casket, and about you. And I had reason to be interested about that casket, Miss Powell, because my mother was the last woman of the Harnways, and Lemuel Harnway is my uncle and sole kinsman.”
A gasp and a movement caused him to lift his eyes. She had risen to her feet, and stood there with clenched hands, stern and indignant of face, head thrown back, and everything about her pose eloquent of anger and indignation.
“Wait! Wait!” he pleaded. “Don't be angry until you hear what I have to say. It was I, after all, who helped you steal that trinket over there, that damn'd bauble that has cost so much of enmity, and blood, and death! Senselessly! The thing that wiped out Powells and Harnways, the good of them and the bad of them alike—remorselessly, absurdly! Oh, Miss Powell, if I were a feudist as those others have been; or if I hadn't prized your friendship, appreciated and yielded to the foolish desire of your heart, that thing on which you had so set your mind, do you think I would be here to-night?” He gestured toward the Crusader's box with an emphasis of hatred. “No, if I had my way, it would have been at the bottom of the sea before ever it fell into the hands of either Powell or Harnway! It would never have been! I helped you get it because you wanted it, and I wanted you to possess anything you desired.”
For a time, with averted and downcast eyes, she weighed his words, and as an evidence of relenting walked slowly across the room and sat down in one of the easy wicker chairs. He saw his advantage and, leaning toward her, went on with his explanation, argument, and appeal.
“It may be that I did a foolish thing; but I was driven to it by my longing for your esteem. I was a coward on that night down in the gardens, there under the trees with the sea washing the old walls, when you confided to me your quest. I was afraid to tell you that I was a Harnway on my mother's side, one of that race that you fought against and hated. I was afraid that if I told you who and what I was, I couldn't ever see you again; that you would regard me as an inherited enemy, and—and—I didn't wish to be that. I craved to be at least one of your friends. I wished to at least have fair standing for something I wanted very much, your esteem and—perhaps something greater! Yes, I'm going to say it now, when everything has to be cleared up. I didn't have the courage to tell you who and what I was because I was afraid that if I did I couldn't ever be with you, ever see you, ever talk to you again. Tommie, I kept those things from you because of that! I helped to put into your hands that little golden trinket because of that. Because neither it nor the old feud mattered when all I wanted was you!”
He found himself on his feet without thought of anything save his yearning for her; found himself standing in front of her, bent forward with outstretched hands, appealing, pleading for understanding, for forgiveness, and she had leaned toward him, as if considering all that he had said. He waited in an agony of apprehension and then when she made no response whispered: “Tommie! Tommie! You mustn't blame me too much for what I've done, because I love you. I can't help anything that's been done any more than I can help being a Harnway or you can help being a Powell. Isn't it time that all the old horrible, tragic episodes of a feud were brushed aside, and the feud itself forgotten? I've no excuses to offer—nothing at all—save that I love you. That I want you! That if I can't have you and your love, I still cry for your friendship. And—see! We are here! We have escaped from the police and we are going to a foreign country far beyond Italy's reach, and”
He flung himself across the intervening space, seized from the piano the ancient golden casket and thrust it into her hands. Her fingers were interlocked, white and hard pressed, but at the touch of the metal they relaxed, yielded, opened and for a moment clutched that cause of feud. She lifted it as if never before she had seen it, stared at it as if fascinated, then slowly looked upward at him as he bent above her, waiting, petitioning. And then the Crusader's Casket fell unheeded to the floor as both her hands went up to him. He caught them and lifted her and she was held close to his breast. Her hands, released, moved swiftly upward until they were around his shoulders where they held closely as if after all their restless, reckless eagerness they had at last found and clung to the greatest possession of all. She felt something against her foot in that moment and impatiently kicked it aside. It was the little casket of gold.