The Lightning Conductor Discovers America Part 2

(She had indeed. If she'd told us once she'd told us a dozen times. I longed to say so. But one doesn't say to Mrs. Shuster the things one longs to say. She would go to bed and die if one did.)

"I've wired him to meet me at the boat, because I thought I'd interest him in brave Peter Storm," she went on. "That poor fellow's so quixotic he won't take favours from a woman. But he can't refuse a helping hand from a man like Ed Caspian."

"Have you told Mr. Storm what you're going to do for him?" I ventured to inquire.

"Not yet," said Mrs. Shuster, slowly and conspicuously covering with gloves a pair of hands more ringed than Saturn. "I thought I'd surprise him. You see, he's persuaded the authorities that he's an American (though you know what _I_ think!), so he's no emigrant, but a returning citizen of the United States. That's what his pa.s.sport makes him out to be. I've seen it. I asked to. He'll be getting off the s.h.i.+p with the rest of us, and I shall just say, 'Mr. Storm, I want you to have a little talk with Mr. Caspian, the great social philanthropist.'"

"I see!" I responded inadequately. "But I thought, judging from the newspapers, that Mr. Caspian had--er--turned over a new leaf since he tumbled into all that money."

(You've read, I suppose, Mercedes mia, about the change in the White Hope of the socialists when suddenly he found himself the tenth richest man in America? I'd never met him myself, till the day of our landing: I've been on the other side of the water so much since Jack and I were married and father died. But one has often heard of Ed Caspian, the "gentleman socialist," the s.h.i.+ning light of settlement workers. And since this money came to him several friends have written that it was sad--or funny, according to the point of view--to see how he'd altered.)

"It's only the gutter papers that print those horrid stories," Mrs.

Shuster reproached me. "Why, they say things against _Me_ sometimes!

They say all I do is for self-advertis.e.m.e.nt. Did you ever hear such a wicked lie? But we Public Characters have to put up with a lot. It's our martyrdom. _I_ know Ed Caspian through and through. At one time--" (she blushed and bridled as only a fat woman with two or three chins can bridle, and I understood what she wished me to understand, though Ed Caspian can't be more than thirty-two, and she's perhaps forty-five)--"at one time--oh, well, he was a poor young man with n.o.ble principles, and I'm always interested in such. My poor husband left me free to do as I liked at his death, and I was able to help several inst.i.tutions Mr. Caspian was working for. I've been in Europe since he got his money; but I have perfect faith in him. He's richer than I am now, by a long shot, but he used to say he'd do anything to prove his grat.i.tude. It's up to him to prove it to-day. I sent him a long telegram from Sandy Hook, and, by the by, mentioned you and the Honble Captain Winston."

Jack is attacked with acute goosefles.h.i.+tis whenever she calls him that, but I think it's pathetic, she relishes the word "Honourable" so much, and makes it sound round and fat in her mouth like a big chocolate cream. Of course, Jack and I are quite _n.o.bodies_; but it did occur to me when in the same breath she said, "Ed would do anything," etc., and "I mentioned you," that Mr. Caspian might know about Jack's father; and that he might find it better worth while bothering to meet Lord Brighthelmston's son than merely to prove his grat.i.tude to a benefactress no longer needed.

Well, anyhow, the not very good s.h.i.+p _Evangeline_ steamed slowly to her wharf at an early hour of the morning, and Patsey Moore and Mrs. Shuster were two of the most excited people on board. Jack and I expected no one to meet us, because purposely we had let no one know. So we were not desperately emotional for our own sakes. But we were for Pat's.

"In a minute we'll see Larry!" she kept exclaiming. And her cheeks were like roses and her eyes like sapphires--literally, sapphires.

We all gazed at the welcoming, waving crowd; but as the ma.s.s individualized into faces, male and female, there was nothing admirable enough for Larry. Pat gave up hope almost as willingly as a lioness in the Zoo would give up her food at half-past feeding time. But at last she had to bow to the inevitable. Larry had not materialized. She was in "M" and we were in "W," so we couldn't do as much for her as we should have liked, and for a while had to leave her to the tender mercies of her maid. It was a relief to my mind, therefore, when I saw Mrs. Shuster introducing a man--Mr. Caspian I had no doubt--to the girl. Hurrying back to "S," she saw me peering out from "W" and flew to me, breathless.

"He came, you see!" she panted. "Dear fellow! He's just the same. Not one bit spoilt. But oh, what _do_ you think he's told me--about Miss Moore's father?"

"Not dead?" I breathed.

"Worse!" She stopped to pant some more. I could have shaken her.

"Don't keep me in suspense," I begged. But the lady's eyes had lit upon her protege. "There's Peter Storm!" she exclaimed. "I've been watching for him. I was afraid he might get away without seeing me."

He certainly was in the act of getting away, though I wasn't so sure about the rest. "Mr. Storm!" she cried. "Mr. Storm!"

He was forced to turn. Mrs. Shuster beckoned. He came toward us, though not with the long strides which had been leading him in another direction. He took off his cap, bowed gravely, and murmured something about having a man to meet.

(Jack was absent on leave, searching for some one to look at our trunks.)

"Oh, Mr. Storm," said his guardian angel, "I wouldn't have missed you for anything. But I was afraid you might have misunderstood my message.

I've sent for a very important man, a great friend of mine, to introduce you to--Mr. Ed Caspian. He won't be long now. But when I mentioned Miss Moore, the young lady on the s.h.i.+p, and pointed her out to him, he told me the most dreadful news about her father. The poor man is absolutely ruined and bankrupt and everything else that's bad; and here's this dear child with trunkfuls of clothes and a motor car to pay duty on. Mr.

Caspian was _so_ interested when he saw her (that shows he's as good-hearted as ever in spite of the newspapers!), and he's ready to do anything to help, even to paying all the duties."

Half-forgotten gossip hopped into my mind like a toad. Somebody had shown me a paragraph in a scandal-loving American paper about the "change of heart" Ed Caspian had undergone with his change of purse.

"Oh, he can't be allowed to do anything of that sort for Miss Moore," I said quickly. "Her father must have heaps of friends who--and anyhow, _we_ shall look after her. I do hope Mr. Caspian isn't telling the poor child about her father's troubles?"

"Well, he offered to break the news to her gently," confessed Mrs.

Shuster, looking guilty. "I told him she was so worried about Mr. Moore not coming to the boat. I'm sure Mr. Caspian wouldn't say a word to frighten her. He's as gentle as a fawn. I always found him so. And we'll _all_ do things to help dear little Miss Moore. We'll club together; I'd love to."

I hardly heard. Without a thought of answering I dashed off to the rescue of Pat. But I was conscious, as I dashed, that the s.h.i.+p's Mystery had given me a look. Not a word had he spoken since Mrs. Shuster began on the subject of Patsey Moore (not that he'd had a chance), but the look was one which n.o.body, no matter how preoccupied, could _help_ being conscious of--it was so brilliant and so strange.

On the way to Patsey I caught sight of Jack in the distance and diverged to him. "I'll get hold of a man in a minute," he said, thinking I'd grown impatient.

"Never mind a man!" I snapped. "Never mind anything!"

"Not even your hats?" he laughed.

"_Hang_ my hats! Oh, Jack, Pat's father's ruined, and that Caspian creature is telling her--unless we can stop him. Do come!"

Jack came. But we were too late. The roses on Pat's cheeks were already snowed under when we hurled ourselves at "M." They both turned as we came up, she and he together. I wasted only one glance on Mr.

Caspian--just enough to see that he was a small man perfectly turned out by his tailor and fairly well by his Maker: all the upper part of a blond head and face rather beautiful and idealistic, the lower part not so good, might even be a rude contradiction. Then my eyes went to Pat's, which were more sapphire-like than ever, because they glittered behind tears that she'd have died rather than let fall. By not winking she had induced the tear-vessels to take back a few, and the process would go on satisfactorily, I was sure, if nothing untoward intervened.

"Have you and Mr. Winston met Mr. Caspian?" she asked, as formally as at a school reception for teaching young girls How to Succeed in Society.

Her lips were white and moved stiffly, as lips do when they are cold, though the day was mild as milk. "Mr. Caspian says he knows Larry slightly, and--and--that he's in great trouble."

"I'm awfully sorry to be a bearer of ill tidings," Ed Caspian defended himself to Jack and me, "but Miss Moore was worrying--when Mrs. Shuster introduced us--because her father hadn't come to meet her, and I thought it would perhaps be best----"

Well, I won't bother you, Mercedes, dear, with all the "we saids" and "he saids." We--that is, Jack and I--soon realized that Caspian knew what he knew about "Larry's" affairs by hearsay, or from the newspapers.

He was scarcely acquainted with Larry himself: had only met him at houses of mutual friends. Laurence Moore had come a regular cropper, it seemed. Things had been faring badly with him for some time "because he was no business man, and fellows were always persuading him to go into rotten things." "But we'll see him through, Miss Moore, we'll see him through," Mr. Caspian finished up. "Don't be unhappy. And I see in the papers that the fine old house is yours and can't be sold. Your father made it over to you legally, years ago. So that's all right, isn't it?"

"Have--have things been in the papers about us?" asked Pat. The tears had been put neatly back where they belonged, without one dropping out, and she looked pitifully brave--ready for anything, no matter what. She didn't know enough about the world to resent anything Caspian had said.

On the contrary, she was probably thinking he meant to be kind--showing himself a good friend of Larry's and all that. Of course I realized from the first that the instant he saw Pat the man simply snapped at her. If indeed he had the intention of helping Larry it had been born in his mind within the last fifteen minutes, and whatever he might do would be for value received. Not that it was quite fair to blame him for that.

With another type of man I might have thought it thrillingly romantic that he should fall in love at first sight and resolve to save the girl's father. But with Ed Caspian it was different--somehow. You see, he used to pose as a saint, a sort of third-rate St. George, with Society for the Dragon: he was all for the poor and oppressed. I remember reading speeches of his, in rather prim language. He was supposed to live like an anchorite. Now, here was St. George turned into his own Dragon. What an unnatural transformation! He, who had said luxury was hurrying the civilized world to destruction, wore a pearl in his scarf-pin worth thousands of dollars if it was worth a cent. He had all the latest slang of a Bond Street Nut. (By the way, over here when one talks of a "nut" it doesn't mean a swell, but a youth who is what they'd call "dotty" or "bunny on the 'umph" in a London music hall.) And though his eyebrows still had that heavenly arch which must have made his early reputation, the rest of him didn't look heavenly at all.

If I'd been a sensible matchmaker, I ought to have said to myself, perhaps, "Never mind, my dear Molly, beggars mustn't be choosers. Pat is, it seems, a beggar maid. You shouldn't look a gift Cophetua in the mouth. Here he is, to be had for the taking. Encourage her to take him."

But I just _couldn't_! I wanted her by and by to marry some one tall and handsome and altogether splendid. In fact, a _Man_. And if a man were a Man, it didn't matter whether he were a Cophetua or not. So I listened quite disgustedly as Mr. Ed Caspian answered Pat's piteous question about the newspapers, and criticised his affected accent. I think he fancied it English.

"Oh, it happens to lots of the best men," he set out to console her, "to be in the papers that way. There's nothing in it! I shouldn't have noticed, had it been some chap I'd never heard of. And then, Kidd's Pines, don't you know! That's a famous place. There was a picture of it in the Sunday _Times_, and something about its history. I've always wanted to see the house. May I come down, Miss Moore? There might be ways I could help you--your father, I mean--if I could look around and study the situation. For instance, it might pay me--actually _pay_ me (no question of obligations)--to lend money on the place enough to set Mr. Moore right with his creditors and enough over to begin again."

"I don't understand," said Pat.

"Oh, you _spider_!" said I, in my mind, also perhaps with my eyes. I refrained from saying it with my lips, however, because after all, you see, I was a new friend of Pat's and mustn't stick my fingers into the mechanism of her fate without being sure I could improve its working.

Jack and I aren't millionaires, especially since the war broke out and all our pet investments slumped. That convalescent home for soldiers we're financing at Folkestone eats up piles of money, to say nothing of the Belgian refugees to whom we've given up Edencourt. There are fourteen families, and not less than seven children in the smallest, the largest has sixteen--the average is ten. Is your brain equal to the calculation? Mine isn't, but our purse _has_ to be; for we've guaranteed to clothe as well as feed the lot for the duration of the war, and I hear we're keeping a shoe factory working double time. I felt that the most we could do in a financial way for dear Pat would be to pay duty on her car and clothes, and see that, personally, she lacked for nothing.

Whatever Mr. Caspian's motives might be, I dared not choke him off on my own responsibility, and Jack said not a word. So I swallowed that "spider," but just as I was choking it down and Caspian was beginning to explain his n.o.ble, disinterested scheme, Mrs. Shuster and the S. M. (for that in future please read s.h.i.+p's Mystery) bore down upon the letter "M."

For an instant I supposed that Pirate Shuster had captured Storm as a reluctant prize, but his expression told me that this was not the case.

He came willingly, had even the air of leading the expedition; and his look of interested curiosity Caspian-ward was only equalled by mine at him. Remembering vividly the strange, brilliant, and puzzling glance he had thrown to me as I left him with Mrs. Shuster, I threw him one which I hoped was as brilliant and at the same time more intelligible. What I put into it was: "You're a _man_, even if you are a mystery, so do hurry up and interrupt this conversation, which has got beyond me."

Of course, I didn't dream that he could help by word or deed, but I thought if he just hurled himself blindly into the breach it would be something. By the time Mr. Caspian could renew his offer, Larry Moore might be at hand to look after his own interests and Pat's.

Mr. Peter Storm (perhaps I've mentioned this?) is tall and has therefore very long legs--soldier legs--that is, they can take prodigious strides as if they had a redoubt or something to carry in record time. Whether my glance had la.s.soed him, or whether he _wanted_ to be introduced to Mrs. Shuster's rich friend, I couldn't tell. Anyhow, he landed among us like an arrow shot from an unseen bow, and "Jill came tumbling after."

(By the way, "Jill" would be a lovely name for Mrs. S. I believe her real one is _Lily_.)

Mr. Caspian had to stop talking and turn to the newcomers; but before he stopped his explanation had got as far as "a perfectly businesslike arrangement: a mortgage on the place could be----"

I wondered if Peter Storm's ears were as quick of hearing as they were well shaped; and if so whether he would guess what was up, and take enough impersonal interest in a pretty girl far removed from his sphere to be sorry for her.

Mrs. Shuster's first words went far to answer that question. "Oh, my dear Captain and Mrs. Winston, Mr. Storm suggests the most wonderful plan. I was telling him more about poor Miss Moore's troubles--all I'd heard from Mr. Caspian--and it seems he knows about Kidd's Pines, dear Miss Patty's beautiful place which is her own in spite of all misfortunes." She stopped and giggled a little; then went on in a coy tone, with an arch glance at her tall protege. "I had to confess that I could never believe he was an American. But now I have to. He knows too much about America not to have lived here. He says he used to keep a winter hotel in Florida, and he knows all about the business. He thinks Miss Moore might make a fortune turning Kidd's Pines into a hotel--the right kind of hotel. Isn't it a _wonderful_ idea, to help her poor father? Oh, I forgot! Mr. Caspian, Mr. Storm! I was telling you about him, Eddy."