The Port of Adventure Part 41

If she chose to waste hours there it was her business, not that of the household.

But driving to the town, Carmen decided not to go to San Francis...o...b.. that night's train. She had had time to reflect a little, not only upon what had happened, but upon what was likely to happen. If Angela May suspected the truth--and Carmen's conscience told her that this was more than probable--she would not go back to the ranch. Nick would not let her go there, even if she wished it. He would send for or fetch the Irish maid and the luggage, while Mrs. May--already engaged to marry him, perhaps--waited at his place, or at a Bakersfield hotel. In any case it was almost certain that "the woman" (as Carmen called Angela always, in her mind) would travel to San Francisco that night. And it seemed likely to Mrs. Gaylor that Nick would go with her and the maid. Carmen could not risk an encounter in the train.

Arrived at Bakersfield, fortunately without meeting Nick in his motor, she hired a large automobile. And at the hour when Hilliard was being informed that Mrs. Gaylor had gone away for a few days, on business which had come up suddenly, she was travelling swiftly by road to San Francisco.

The car she had engaged was a powerful touring automobile, with side-curtains of canvas, and these she ordered to be kept down; for she had some wild fear that Nick might discover her plan, try to follow and find her during her journey, necessarily much longer by motor than by train. Always by daylight she was peeping out, nervously, from under her thick veil, but the Bright Angel never flashed into sight. She knew at last that it would not come, that Nick did not mean to follow; that she would not see him again this side the grave; for she did not intend ever to return to the Gaylor ranch. Where she would live she did not know yet, though she thought vaguely of some great city in Europe--Paris, perhaps, where there would be plenty of excitement which might help her to forget.

Meanwhile, the thing was to get away--away, not only from California, but even from America--as quickly as possible, it hardly mattered how, for luckily--the one piece of luck she had left!--there was plenty of money.

And the ranch could take care of itself.

The day Carmen reached San Francisco a s.h.i.+p happened to be sailing for j.a.pan. She was able to engage a cabin, and went on board almost at the last moment. Among others who arrived very late was a bent old man, with a worn face which had once been handsome. Carmen did not see him till the third day out. Then, from the deck sacred to second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, a pair of dark blue, red-rimmed eyes looked up at her as she leaned listlessly on the rail, gazing down.

Madame Vestris had seen in the crystal a man standing beside her, a man in shadow. After all, it was not Nick Hilliard but Simeon Harp.

x.x.x

THE MAKING OF A GENTLEMAN

One evening, when July was beginning, Nick Hilliard sat on the veranda of his plain little house, which he had grown to love. Swinging back and forth in a big rocking-chair, he smoked a pipe and thought very hard. As he thought and smoked, he looked dreamily at a young owl in a big cage; the owl he had sent home from Paso Robles.

If he had been thinking about it, he could have seen, dark against the pale fire of the desert sky, the source of his fortune; the great gusher throwing up its black spout of oil, like tons upon tons of coal. For the famous Lucky Star oil supply showed no sign yet of giving out, though it had been playing like a huge geyser for many months; and already, since its mysterious birth, many younger brothers had been born, small and insignificant comparatively, but money-makers. If Nick's thought had not drawn down a curtain in front of his eyes, he must have seen, across a blue lake and a black desert created by a rain of oil, a forest of derricks, like a scattered group of burnt fir-trees with low-hung bare branches. But instead of these his mind's eye saw a new road, shaded by walnuts and oaks, that marched in long straight lines between rough pasture and irrigated land. He saw in the tree-shadows a yellow motor-car drawn up by the side of the road, and in it a beautiful, pale girl, hatless, with disordered golden hair and a torn white dress. He saw a man with the girl, and heard her say that it would have been better to die than let herself care for him.

"Yet she _did_ care for me," Nick told himself obstinately. "There's no getting over that. She said, 'You mustn't think I don't care.'" And even if she hadn't said it, there was that look in her eyes. Could he ever forget the look, or cease to thrill at the memory? No; he knew that he could not, till the hour of his death. "It was because I'm not of her world, that she couldn't bear to let herself go, and love me as she was beginning to love me, I know," he thought, as he had thought countless times before, in the weeks since he had quietly let her go out of his life. "I'm not what she's been brought up to call a gentleman," his mind went on drearily preaching to him. "I suppose I can't realize the bigness and deepness of the gulf between us, as she sees it. I've only my own standards to judge by. Hers are mighty different. I knew there _was_ a gulf, but I hoped love would bridge it. She thought no bridge could be strong enough for her to walk on to me. I wonder if she thinks the same yet, or if the feeling I have sometimes, that she's calling to me from far off, means anything? I told her that day I'd feel her thinking of me across the world. Well--what if she's thinking of me now?"

Nick had often debated this subject, and looked at it from every point of view; for after the first blow over the heart, a dim, scarcely perceptible light of hope had come creeping back to him. Knowing from her words, and better still from her eyes, that Angela had cared a little, at least enough to suffer, Nick had wondered whether he might not make himself more acceptable to her than he had been.

He did not disparage himself with undue humility in asking this question.

He knew that he was a man, and that honour and strength and cleanness of living counted for something in this world. But if he could become more like the men she knew--in other words, a gentleman fit to mate with a great lady--what then?

For Nick was aware that his manners were not polished. In what Mrs. May would call "society," no doubt he would be guilty of a thousand mistakes, a thousand awkwardnesses. If he did anything rightly it would be by instinct--instinct implanted by generations of his father's well-born, well-bred ancestors--rather than from knowledge of what was conventionally the "proper thing." If Angela had let love win, perhaps she might often have been humiliated by his ignorances and stupidities, Nick reminded himself; and for him that would have been worse than death, even as for her, according to her admission, it would have been worse than death to go on caring for him. Perhaps she had been wise. Maybe he was "impossible."

But, if ever she suffered a moment's regret, now that they were parted, and if he could yet find a way of happiness for both, better than cold wisdom, was there no hope? It was of a way to reach her that he was thinking to-night; and abruptly the big chair ceased to swing and creak.

"I'll go and see that chap they call the Dook!" Nick mumbled on a sudden resolution, and knocked out the ashes from his pipe.

A minute later he was strolling through the hot purple twilight toward Lucky Star City, one of the queerest little towns on earth. It had not, however, the remotest conception that it was queer. On the contrary, it thought itself a gay and pleasant place, singularly up-to-date, and lacking nothing except water, which was now worth a good deal more than the fortune-giving oil of which it had too much.

The rough, mostly unpainted, wooden houses, shops, and hotels composing Lucky Star City were so near the great oil gusher which accounted for the town's existence that the front rank of frame buildings was peppered all over with a jetty spray. This disfigurement had come when the gusher was at its highest, and its black, blowing spume had been borne by the wind for long distances. The earth seemed to have gone into mourning and to be spread with a pall almost as far as the boundary of the ranch which Nick had retained for himself; yet there was a strong dividing-line. He had kept some pasture land, for he loved cattle; but his great pleasure had been in irrigation; and literally he had made the desert "blossom as a rose." Even the smell was different when he turned his back upon his own fragrant alfalfa fields, and drew in breaths laden with the fumes of crude petroleum. But he was used to the scent of oil and hardly noticed it.

He skirted round the desert lake and steered clear of another lesser lake, formed entirely of petroleum from the great gusher. By day its greasy blackness glared in hideous contrast to the blue though brackish water; but now night lent its ugliness a strange disguise. All the faint twilight that remained glimmered on the gloss of its surface like phosphorus in the palm of a negro's hand; and as Nick pa.s.sed on toward the town, stars shone out in its dark mirror. He could hear the thick splash of the gusher that rose and fell, like the beating of a giant's heart, and from the brightly lighted town sounds of laughter and fiddling came to him.

Lucky Star City had no suburbs. The whole place had grown up in less than a year, and, in fact, such buildings as had existed for six months were known as "old." There was but one street, though a few ambitious landowners had run up houses in "gardens" at a short but haughty distance from the "business part"; and at night the town was seen at its best. The three two-storeyed, verandaed hotels--one painted white, another green, the third and noisiest not painted at all--blazed with lights. The drug store, the jewellery store (for there was a jewellery store, and a prosperous one), the grocery store--combining a large trade in candy--the post office, and the dry-goods store--where two extremes were made to meet with a display of hats and shoes in the same window--were every one open and crowded. Men in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, and men in khaki, men of almost all conditions and nations, sat or lounged on the hotel verandas making music or listening to it, swapping stories and yelling with laughter. Away in the distance at one end of the long street--which had no pavement but yellow sand--there was a shooting gallery, and every second or two was marked off with a shot, or a shout of applause or derision. At the other end, equally far away from the populous centre of shops, was a variety theatre, a mere shanty, run up in a day; and as Nick took his way toward the green-painted hotel he could hear the shrill squalling of a woman's untrained voice, shrieking out the latest comic song.

"h.e.l.lo, Nick!" "How go things, High-pockets?" friendly voices saluted Hilliard as he marched through the cigarette-strewn sand. And he had a laughing word for each one. Everybody who was anybody had a nickname at Lucky Star City, and Hilliard was rather pleased with "High-pockets"

--bestowed upon him because of his height and his long straight legs. "The Dook" was the sobriquet of the person he had come to see; and it was by this name that Nick inquired for him, gravely, of the landlord.

The man addressed chuckled. "I guess he's gone over to Meek's to try and borrow some cash off his dear country-man. I seen him strollin' down that way. Hope Meek'll fork out. The Dook owes me two weeks' board, and I've give him notice to pay up or quit. London hotels may hand out free meals to the n.o.bility and gentry for the sake o' the ad. But this ain't London.

Nope!"

"Is he n.o.bility?" inquired Nick.

"Blamed if I know. Puts on airs enough. Ain't got much else to put on now, I guess. No one never told me you and he was chums."

"No more we are. I never had a word with him; but I'm lookin' for a few,"

said Nick. "If he can make good, we may do some business together."

"Huh!" grunted the landlord of the emerald-painted hotel, which had received its colour in honour and subtle advertis.e.m.e.nt of the owner's name--Green. "I don't see you two swappin' canteens any, Nick, but it ain't for me to bust into your game; and I guess if you sling him a roll o' your good greenbacks, I'll contrive to switch some o' 'em off the line into my pocket. That's to say, if you give him a job he can stick to his bunk and his grub in my hotel."

Mr. Green was just about to round off his ultimatum with a spurt of tobacco-juice aimed at a pa.s.sing cat, when he checked himself hastily at sight of a woman. What became of the tobacco-juice was a mystery or a conjuring trick, but the cat's somewhat blunted sensibilities, and the lady's--not yet blunted--were spared.

"Who's that?" Nick inquired in a low, respectful voice, when Green had touched the place where his hat would have been if he had had it on, and the young woman, bowing with stiff politeness, had gone by.

"What, don't you know?" the landlord of the Eureka Hotel replied with a question. "But I forgot, you ain't shown up around here much since you blow'd hack from the East. The fellers say Noo York's kinder got your goat, and you're sheddin' your feathers in these lonesome wilds, pinin'

after the theayters and swell doin's in the Waldorf-Astoria. But I tell 'em 'nope, that ain't Nick Hilliard. He's true-blue to the Golden West."

"Right you are," said Nick. "All the same, I don't know who the lady is, and I'm sure I never saw her here, though I have a sort of feelin' I remember her face."

"Met in another world, mebbe?" Green chuckled. "She ain't no great looker, though, more's the pity for our young sparks that could do with a noo beauty at Lucky Star. She's no chicken, either; and her face is the kind of face that to see once is to forget twice, accordin' to your friend the Dook, who's great on what he calls epergrams, when he's feelin' well."

"Oh, is he?" Nick's hopeful expression lost some of its glow, for this trait of the Dook's did not strike him as attractive. "He ain't my friend yet. But you haven't told me who the lady is. Maybe her name will shake up my recollection box, for I've seen her somewhere, sure."

"She's Miss Sara Wilkins, the new school-teacher," Green replied, glad to impart information. "She was imported from the fur East while you was away; called on in a hurry to take the place of Mrs. Pears, who died on us, right in the midst of the last term, poor critter. She had no way with youngsters, Mrs. Pears hadn't, though she came recommended as a treasure: so p'raps it's just as well for us our treasure's laid up in heaven. We've got a surprisin' lot of children in this city, for such a young one; but our men are doin' that well they feel justified in sendin' fur their families. We're gettin' a mighty nice society: some o' our ladies from the East, as far off as Omaha; and 'twas the minister's wife stood out for this Miss Wilkins, an old school-fellow o' hern. Pity she ain't handsome, as we can't boast but two other unmarried gals in our set."

Nick reflected. Where had he seen that small-featured, conscientious little face? He seemed to a.s.sociate it with some agreeable and not very distant episode; yet its intelligent insignificance was so overshadowed by the pleasantness of the episode itself, that he now tried in vain to identify it with a searchlight of recognition. "I give up," he said to himself discontentedly. "Maybe it'll come to me later." And then, suddenly, it did.

The new school-teacher at Lucky Star City was the little woman who had arrived with the Native Daughters at the Santa Barbara hotel, and would have been swamped by them had not Angela taken pity on her. No wonder it had been an effort to label his impression, for no woman had a face worth the name of face for Nick when Angela's was to be seen. But perhaps Miss Wilkins had not had the same difficulty in disentangling him from among her impressions of the past, for she had flashed upon him a glance, bright with interest, before casting down her eyes decorously and pa.s.sing on.

"Here comes the Dook now," remarked the landlord of the Eureka. "By the look of him I guess his country-man wouldn't part with anything 'cept a drink. If he keeps clear of the liquor belt, as a general thing, it's only because his fee-nan-shel situation don't run to it. I'll introduce you."

A man approached, wearing a shambling air of discouragement, until he saw that he was under observation; whereupon his muscles tightened, and he pulled himself together, straightening his narrow shoulders and throwing back his small head.

"Mr. Nickson Hilliard, this is Mr. Montagu Jerrold, _alias_ the Dook, a blarsted Britisher," announced Green affably. "Dook, this is Mr. Nickson Hilliard, who wants to meet you, the Lord knows why; late owner of Lucky Star gusher and the whitest man and the biggest man we've got in this section. His other name is High-pockets, as I guess you hev heard, and it might be Full-pockets too, wuthout steerin' wide o' the mark."

Nick put out his hand to the newcomer who had a haughty beak of a nose, little forehead, and less chin. Wretched bit of flotsam and jetsam on the sands of life, one keen look into his self-satisfied light eyes was enough to learn the secret of his failure; failure which, go where he would, seek as he might, could never be turned into success. Nick's heart pitied the man, while it shut involuntarily against him.

Montagu Jerrold crooked his elbow and lifted the brown strong hand of High-pockets to a level with his own weak chin, before he deigned to shake it. He did so then with an air, and a drawled "How d'y' do?" which was the most English thing that Nick had ever met with off the stage.

"Little brute, I'd like to kick him if he wasn't such a duffer," was Nick's reluctant thought, for he had wanted to be favourably impressed by the Dook. If this were really anything like an English duke, give _him_ a crossing-sweeper! But he must not be too hasty in his generalization. He was unhappily sure that Mrs. May's position in her far-off world (world for which he was deemed unworthy) a.s.sociated her with dukes, earls, barons, counts, and all sorts of t.i.tled anachronisms of every nation.

Repulsive as this draggled specimen appeared, it might know something worth his, Nick Hilliard's, while to learn; and he was not going to give up because of first impressions. He had not met Montagu Jerrold before, but had heard of him often during the last three or four months since the Englishman "blew into" Lucky Star City. He was a boaster as well as a waster, no doubt; for according to himself, he knew "everybody at home,"

from the King down the whole gamut of the British peerage. Also he "claimed" to be an Oxford man, and it was that which, in this emergency, had focused Nick's attention upon him.

The landlord, aware that Nick had a "proposition" to make, excused himself when he had brought off the introduction; and the two men were left more or less alone at their end of the hotel veranda. Nevertheless, so complicated was the nature of Nick's business that he wished for greater privacy, and he suggested a stroll in the direction of the gusher.

"You're an Oxford graduate, aren't you?" he began.

"Ya-as, I went up to Oxford from Eton," drawled Jerrold with an accent which Nick disliked, but was ready to believe in as well-bred, because few Englishmen to the "manner born" had happened to come his way. "All the elder sons of my family, since the days of Charles the Second, don't you know, have gone in for the Army; and that's what I should have liked, but my eldest brother has the money as well as the t.i.tle, d'you see, and I'm only third son. I----"

"Yes," said Nick curtly. "But you mustn't worry to tell me all your private affairs unless you really want to. Because what I'm most interested in is the Oxford part. I never went to college, nor to any school for the matter of that, except a night one, but I've tried to make up a bit with reading all I could. I suppose I don't know much about books, compared with you----"