"C Q", or, In the Wireless House/Chapter 19
XIX
In which the rat-faced purser, some others, and perhaps the reader, receive a jolt
THE great ship steamed up the channel, swung round the Battery and into the North River amid a throng of shrieking tugs and ferry-boats. The marble turrets of the lower island rose against the blue like the dream towers of Maxfield Parrish’s imagination in his picture of the "Dinky Bird."
(As all sapient people know),
Is the land of Wonder-Wander,
Whither children love to go.
Nearer the river the vision lost its romance, even if it retained its inspiration, and huge signs emphasizing the admirable qualities of pickles, pattern concerns, and stove polish reared their gigantic frames skyward. Across on the New Jersey side the congestion was as great, but of a somewhat lower order, and more smoky. The glittering surface of the river was covered with swiftly moving boats and launches which projected themselves in all directions with the velocity and manner of water beetles on a mud pond. The air was charged with a deep uproar in which mingled the whistles of factories, locomotive engines, freighters and ocean liners, their tones rising from the deep diapason of the leviathan to the shrill scream of the motor boat. Even half a mile from shore the air was electric with the thrill and bustle of lower Broadway. The island irradiated good nature.
The whole ship’s company experienced an elevation of spirit. Tongues carefully restrained for fear of encouraging undesirable acquaintanceships were loosened to chatter recklessly with persons whose only claim to recognition was that they had been upon the same boat for fourteen days. The little hunchback was hobbling around everywhere, thanking people for having been so kind to him. First and second cabin alike massed themselves forward striving to distinguish through inferior glasses relatives or friends supposed to be awaiting their arrival upon a dock as yet over a mile distant. The second steward appeared walking ostentatiously in the vicinity of the more wealthy passengers, and state-room stewards and stewardesses hurried anxiously about the decks looking for patrons who had forgotten them. Ladies who had arrayed themselves like last year’s scarecrows during the voyage appeared in crinkly Parisian garments with marvelous hats and heavily embroidered veils, and an elderly woman whose mottled features had been all sicklied o’er with a more than pale cast of thought during the past two weeks now burst forth in a white serge costume and an entirely new countenance bearing the vivid imitation of rosy youth. On her feet she wore shapely pointed patent-leather shoes absolutely new, which creaked loudly as she walked; and in her large white-gloved hand she carried a leather-covered parrot cage with a flap fastened by a brass buckle. When a momentary lull occurred the occupant could be heard crooning and chuckling to himself.
Everybody was talking to everybody else. Now that the trip was over and the shore close at hand people seemed to be rather sorry that they had not taken greater advantage of their opportunities to make themselves agreeable. Many felt a passing tinge of disappointment that the journey was not a day or so longer. The even keel of the ship and the present solidity of her decks caused a tempo- rary forgetfulness of recent intestinal experiences, and dimmed the virtues of Father Sill’s Celebrated Sea-Sick Remedy in which the barber had done a thriving trade throughout the voyage at two bob six per box.
Ponsonby, bursting with pride over the reproduction of his purple face on the front page of a morning edition, strode up and down the bridge, smoking the remaining shilling cigar. Chauffeurs and valets down on the second-cabin deck renewed their attentions, which had lagged somewhat during the dead waste and middle of the voyage, to the various ladies of their choice and made definite engagements, positive and binding, for the next Saturday afternoon out. Business men with pencil and paper in their hands sat figuring and wondering how long it would be before they could reach their offices; passengers for Boston and Chicago pensively studied railroad folders; and the champagne drummer distributed cards to all his acquaintances recommending “our special cuvée 1911 Brut at $24.00 per case of pints.”
People forgot that they had been across the ocean or on the sea at all, their minds being filled with disquieting thoughts anent getting through the Customs. Little girls worried about being late to school. Little boys uttered horrible swear words at having to go back at all. Everything was jam, bustle, confusion. The baggage was piled in a towering mass by the second-cabin gangway, and a hundred more of the crew stood idly waiting to hustle it ashore at the proper moment. Intelligent men and women gained intense pleasure from recognizing a particular piece of their baggage among the ruck, although it had reposed in their state-room but an hour before.
It seemed hours before the Pavonia slowly began to turn her nose to the dock, assisted by a dozen puffing tugs who rammed her with padded bows in order to make a shorter corner. At an opening at the end of the Cunard pier could be seen a multitude of tiny heads.
“There ’s John, I know it is!" cried the parrot lady, wildly waving her handkerchief, al-though she was firmly wedged among a crowd of at least fifty other persons. With exasperating deliberation the steamer floated dockward, foot by foot. The heads at the end of the pier grew bigger and bigger.
“Why, it is n’t John at all!” exclaimed the chagrined lady. “I never saw that man before in my life.”
With streams of water pouring from her vents down her huge black sides the Pavonia was shoved, pushed and hauled into her moorings amid a terrific bellowing of orders from the bridge. The relatives and friends on the dock, having recognized with ostentatious excitement the relatives and friends on board, repeated the exchange of salutations from moment to moment in a gradual diminuendo of enthusiasm.
“Hello! Hello! Mary! Here I am!” “Hello, old sport!” “Have a good trip?” “Fine!” “Hello, father—hello!” “Yes! Got it in my bag!” “Yes! Oh, fine!” “How ’s maw!” “Rotten! Yes, I lost her overboard—” “Oh, yes, Rome was great, but you oughter see Parus—it was simply fine!—fine!” “Yes! I see her! She's fine!—fine”—“Perfectly lovely!”— “No I was n’t sick, but lots of ’em were!”
These and a hundred thousand other platitudes. banalities and witticisms were bawled, shouted and shrieked across the intervening forty feet of water, accompanied by extraordinary contortions of body, and by the most horrible mouthings, grimaces and gesticulations while the Pavonia was made fast and her gangplanks run ashore.
Then they all began to crowd down the gangways, and that pitiable and enlightening spectacle—the great American public struggling with its individual conscience—began.
All this time Micky sat aloft in his little cage smoking his pipe and taking in the scene with huge enjoyment. He was in no hurry to go ashore. In fact, unless he were fooling with horses, he 's rather be on a boat, even with nothing to do than hanging around town any day in the week. He saw with mingled feelings Lily and her husband, followed by Fantine, edge their way down the gang-plank and disappear in the covered shed of the pier. She was really a good sort, but—! There was a something about her—he could n’t explain it —not just right. He wrinkled his freckled nose. What was it always told him about such women?
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, pulled out the drawer of his desk and searched around among the pile of miscellaneous papers with which it was littered. With some difficulty he found what he was looking for. He placed the photograph on his knee and looked into Evelyn Farquhar’s young face with its arch glance and half parted lips. Now she was just as full of fun as Mrs. Trevelyan,—just as lively, just as jolly a companion, yet she was cut out of clean, whole cloth. She had no flighty fits of temper. She was always the same. Always the same—? His lips quivered. How could his little girl have forgotten her ring and her promise? Could she with her true nature have chucked him for even so fine a chap as Cosmo Graeme had been? Could she have given herself to another after their parting in the grove behind the gamekeeper’s? His heart told him no, yet he had heard it from one who should know. “I leave you engaged to be married to Evelyn Farquhar, one of the loveliest girls in all England,” Mrs. Trevelyan had said to Graeme in the moonlight. Well, it was true that his Lady of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem was the loveliest girl in all England, and—perhaps—it was true also that she had been engaged to this other man. But now—now, what? Graeme was out of it. He might have won the race but he had passed out before he could claim the prize. That bloody old earl! Micky ground his teeth through the tears that would come in spite of him
“Hello, Micky!” said Binks, sticking his head in the door. “’Ere ’s a pyper in exchange for that Pink ’Un you gave me! Goin’ ashore?”
“Thanks, old chap!” replied Micky. “No—not just yet.”
“Say,—those hofficers is ’avin’ a great ’unt for that fellow Cloud,” continued Binks “Hit turns out ’e ’s a murderer. Killed the bloomin’ Hearl o’ Roakby! An’ blime if ’e ain’t just disappeared entire—without so much a, a by yer leave!”
“Well, let ’em look!” retorted Micky. “What ’s to have prevented his jumping overboard and goin’ ashore?”
“Dunno,” answered Binks. “By the way the third match of the champean series between Noo York and Philadelphia is goin’ to be played off this afternoon. Wantcr come along?”
“Should n’t wonder,” answered Micky. “Stick your head in here before you start, will you?”
Binks departed down the ladder and Micky lazily opened the paper, but he found little in it to excite his interest since he had heard most of the news through the air the evening before and during the early morning. Sheet after sheet he scanned of murder mysteries, divorce actions, run-overs, and political upheavals until on the fourteenth ppge his eye caught a column entitled, “Social Gotham,” with the sub-heading of “Earl of Toppingham visits America.”
“Humph!” thought Micky. “The old scallywag! What does he want to visit America for?” He ran down the column. Towards the bottom appeared the following:
The Right Hon. Earl of Toppingham, accompanied by his granddaughter the Hon. Evelyn Arabella Farquhar, is stopping for a few days at the Plaza preparatory to making a trip over the Canadian Pacific to Van-couver, and thence to Japan and India, where his eldest son is in command of a division of the regular army. The party consists of the Earl, his granddaughter, a secretary, valet and maid. It is the Earl’s intention to first visit Niagara before proceeding west. His lordship expresses himself as much pleased with out country, but comments unfavorably upon the rates of cab hire, the prevalence of pictorial advertising, and the character of the Broadway musical shows. The Hon. Evelyn Farquhar is a well-known favorite in London society and her engagement to Cosmo Graeme, youngest son of Lord Conynfort, who disappeared two weeks ago after the Roakby murder, has been announced. It is supposed that the visit of the Earl is upon his granddaughter’s account and for the purpose of diverting her mind by a prolonged journey in the Far East.
Micky swung his feet to the floor and sat bolt upright. The alarm clock before him pointed to ten minutes past twelve. The passengers were all safely down the gang-plank and still engaged in combat with the inspectors. He felt in his pocket for change, grabbed his faded cap from its hook and ran down the ladder. On the main deck he met Binks.
“Sorry,” he said, as he hurried by, “I find I can’t go with you this afternoon. Got another engagement.”
“Oh, you have, have you?” remarked Binks suspiciously. “Wot ’s her name?”
“None of your blooming business!” retorted Micky, turning the color of a tomato. Then he escaped down the gang-plank and parrying the questions of the guardian at the gate hurried across to Ninth Avenue. Panting, he stumbled up the two long flights of metallic steps and struggled through the turn-style operated upon the elevated platform by an unshaven negro in a cinnamon-colored uniform.
With his eye staring vacantly at the seat in front of him he was whirled northward on a level with the second stories of sweat-shops and tenements, out of the windows of which hung in unconscious fashion slatternly women in loose calico garments. But he saw them not. The train swung grinding around a long pair of curves, throwing him first this way and then that, a couple of Russian Poles reeking of garlic and gurgling volubly at each other jostled him, a fat woman in a white shirt waist with blue polka dots took the seat beside him and smothered him behind her enormous bulk, the passengers came and went, got up ?nd sat down, lurched forward and back, gates slammed, the engine jerked, the conductor shouted nasally—but Micky neither heard, saw, nor smelt them. He saw only a broad green English lawn across which stretched the purple shadows of oaks centuries old. The evening air was sweet with the scent of flowers, and the sunlight still lingered on the tree trunks among which stood a slender, wistful girl in a white frock with her arms outstretched to him, a brave smile on her lips, trying to keep back her tears—this was the vision sent to his yearning eyes amid the squalor and hubbub of the elevated, and all that he heard was a tender, girlish voice saying, "Good-by, Micky dear!"
It was exactly three minutes of one when there entered the Plaza Hotel from the 59th Street side a somewhat short, freckled faced auburn-haired, and anxious-looking young person in a shabby blue uniform. The sleek youth at the revolving doors looked at him doubtfully.
“Whodoyerwant?” he shot at him.
But Micky was already at the marble-topped desk with his eye fixed on the elegant frock-coated figure that lounged behind it. The figure continued to lounge even after Micky had accosted him.
“Earl of Toppingham? Sure, he ’s staying here. What do you want to see him about?” answered the clerk, eyeing him condescendingly.
Micky clenched his fists. He would have liked to knock the fellow’s block off.
“I wish to see Miss Farquhar,” he growled, controlling himself.
“Oh, you do? Well, how do you know she ’ll see you?” inquired the clerk, who spoke as if Micky should have applied for admission to the hotel at the kitchen entrance.
“I ’ll take a chance on it,” he muttered. “Give me a blank card,—Lord Algernon.”
The clerk glared at him, but haughtily indicated a receptacle containing cards.
Micky wrote something upon one of them, carefully enclosed it in an envelope, sealed and addressed it, and delivered it to a hall-boy, together with half a crown. Then he stared the clerk out of countenance and took a seat in a grove of potted palms. The boy was gone about ten minutes. Then he appeared, looking eagerly in every direction.
“Come right up,” he said, nodding hospitably.
Micky stumbled after his guide, into a bronze-gilt elevator half full of big hatted ladies, that shot him up swiftly into the regions of eternal peace, smelling of buttered toast and Axminster carpets, He was evacuated into a dark hall at which a fluffy-haired girl sat at a small telephone desk and a couple of Corsican Brothers in fierce mustaches stood motionless in dress suits.
“Thees way, sair!” said on of them with a majestic wave of his hand.
Micky followed along miles and miles of highly polished hall to a mahogany door. His guide turned a handle that caused the feeble imitation of a decrepit alarm clock on the inside. The door was opened by Morley, the gray-haired valet of the Earl of Toppingham, who unemotionally took Micky’s cap and proceeded him to another door, knocked, and left him.
“Come in,” said the Hon. Miss Evelyn.
Micky felt the blood rush to his eyes and head. Suppose the Earl should be inside there, too. He felt himself choking.
“Don’t be a blooming ass!” he muttered and turned the handle.
It was a big room furnished severely but expensively, and there was no one there except a young lady standing by the window in a trim gray walking suit, her golden—really golden—hair neatly done up under a small but rakish hat. It was not his Lady of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, but another,—a glorified, an apotheosized Evelyn, only her eyes and lips were the same. She stood quite still staring at him in a sort of half wonder, and he approached her speechless.
“Micky!” she gasped. “I thought you must be dead!”
“Is that why you did n’t answer my letters?” he asked stiffly.
“But I did,” she replied tremulously—“all I got.— I only received three. And I went on writing to you just the same. Have n’t you got them?”
“None,” answered Micky with a lump in his throat. “Oh, Evvy! I have n’t had anything but that postal from Cortina!”
“You poor boy!” she exclaimed, coming towards him. He started forward, questioning her with swimming eyes.
“Then you're not engaged to Cosmo Graeme?”
“No—of course not!” she cried with a lit-
tie laugh that was half a sob. “How could I be when I ’m engaged—to some one else?”
That most sedately correct person, Mr. Jonathan Morley, several times poked his head inside the door to announce that lunch was ready and each time discreetly withdrew it. His lordship had gone down town to attend a mid-day banquet in his honor given by the Chamber of Commerce, and M-. Morley did not feel at all at his ease with respect to what he observed in the drawing-room of his master. More especially, however, his conscience began to smite him for having arranged for the abstraction of the letters of the pair inside who, he observed, were quite oblivious of his existence,—of everything, in fact, except each other. The luncheon grew cold,—colder,—stone cold. At the end of an hour Mr. Morley regretfully ordered its removal, and retired to his lordship’s bed-chamber to lay out the evening clothes of his master.
In the embrasure of the window these two babes in the wood sat in much the same posture that they had occupied in the grove behind the gamekeeper’s on that memorable afternoon three years before.
“You must never, never leave me now, Micky dear,” whispered the Hon. Evelyn. “Promise me!”
The words brought back to him the scene of the night before and the woman who had spoken them. For an instant the form of Mrs. Trevelyan swam before him. And he had an appointment with her at 5 o’clock! At least she thought he had.
“I ’ve been so lonely!” added Evelyn. “Grandpa has been utterly unreasonable. Why, he used to instruct me just what I was to say to different people—imagine! And I ’m sure he gave it out that I was engaged to Cosmo.”
“The old ruffian!” answered Micky, patting the back of her hand. “But poor old chap, perhaps he was right. I might have become an awful bounder, you know, batting around this way all over the globe. But I ’m going to settle down now;—and I ’m going to find your letters if I have to visit every Marconi office in the civilized world!”
“But you ’ve enjoyed it, have n’t you?” she teased him.
“Enjoyed it!—have you?” he answered reprovingly.
He drew her to him and kissed the lips that quivered and smiled at the same time.
“Lunch!” she suddenly exclaimed, disengaging herself from his arms. “Why, it ’s half-past two!”
“Oh, hang the lunch!” answered Micky. “Let ’s cut it out and go for a drive. We can get tea somewhere.”
A moment later the much scandalized Morley saw his mistress depart with her shabby visitor. He shook his head resignedly.
“Hit’s no use kickin’ against the pricks!” he ruminated sadly as they entered the elevator and the bronze door clashed to behind them. “What is written is written! I wonder what his lordship ’ll say when he comes back!”
The elegant young man in the office almost lost his balance as he saw the Hon. Evelyn Arabella Farquhar and her escort pass unconcernedly through the hall and enter a hansom, and his excitement was shared in almost equal degree by the sleek youth at the revolving door and the six-foot starter on the sidewalk.
“Where to, sir?” asked that stately person touching his cap respectfully.
“Oh, anywhere!” answered Micky casually. “Anywhere that ’ll take until about half after six to get back from.”
“Very good, sir!” gasped the starter. “Yonkers!” said he to the cabby with a grin behind his gloved hand.
The Right Hon. the Earl of Toppingham did not return to the hotel until nearly five o’clock. He was somewhat out of temper as his taxicab had collided with a brewery wagon and he had been obliged to give his name, occupation and address to an assiduous policeman, very much to his disgust. He had also essayed to walk from the scene of the disaster and had lost himself in the neighborhood of the East River.
Morley followed him deprecatingly into his bedroom and coughed suggestively.
“Mr. Michael has turned hup, sir,” he said in well-considered tones.
“What!” ejaculated the noble Earl. “Here?”
“Just so, sir!” replied Morley regretfully. “And I should tell your lordship that Miss Farquhar went out with him at ’arf after two sir, and ’as not yet returned, sir.”
The Earl of Toppingham made no reply. Then with his back to Morley he said:
“Have you still got all those letters?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Well, give them to me,” directed his master. “I may be able to arrange to have them delivered.”
Then the Earl of Toppingham, who was really a nice old man according to his lights went alone into the drawing-room, and having lit a very cheap and nasty cigar, stood looking out over the waving tree-tops in the park for upwards of an hour, and he was still watching the lines of misty lights that circled among the foliage or marched in double columns along its boundaries when the door opened and Evelyn came in.
“Hello, grandpa!” she cried, going over and putting her arms around his neck. “I suppose Morley has told you the whole thing?”
His lordship bent and kissed her flushed cheeks.
“My little Evvy!” he whispered. “My little Evvy!”
“Beg pardon, sir!” called the astonished cabby after Micky as the latter was leaving the steps of the Plaza just as the Hon. Evelyn had entered her apartment on the twenty-fifth floor.
“Ain’t yer goin’ to pay me? This here old hoss is clean played out.”
Micky stopped short and thrust his hands into his pockets one after the other.
“How much is it?” he inquired calmly.
“Thirteen dollars and seventy-five cents,” answered the cabby.
“Is that all?” said Micky. “That ’s much too cheap. I should n’t think you could feed the horse on that,—apart from yourself. But, you know, I have n’t any small change about me.”
“Eh!” cried the cabby. “What are you givin’ me?”
“Charge it to the Earl of Toppingham!” said Micky, lighting a cigarette.
“Charge nuthin’!” shouted the cabman. “You give me my money!”
Then as the starter approached in lofty dignity he turned to him in aggrieved and whining tones.
“Say, guvnor, this guy ’ere tells me to hang up his bill to to the Earl of Toppingham. Would n’t that jar you?”
“Oh, well,” retorted Micky, climbing into the cab. “drive me down to the Cunard Pier!”
As they jogged along Fifth Avenue the electric lights flashed out in pale blue lines and the tops of the tall buildings faded into the darkening sky. He had finished his last cruise! His job with the Marconi Company was over. The leggy little girl with the big dog was his! And there was poor Cosmo racing across the sea to fight the niggers in Africa under a blazing sun while he—he was going back to England—dear, rotten old England, as Graeme had called it, to begin a new and very different life, a life of responsibility, of gravity, he hoped of usefulness—with Evelyn beside him. It had been a strange mix-up, yet it had all come out better than any one could have expected. And the stangest feature of it all had been the way in which Fate had chucked him and Graeme together.
Across the way blazed the windows of the St. Regis, reminding him of his quasi-engagement with Mrs. Trevelyan for five o’clock. Should he keep the appointment? Could he do so, just having left the girl he was going to marry, with the touch of her lips still lingering upon his? He shook his head. No, let her go! That passage in his sailor life was well over. Besides, the fact of his new position in society at large would lead her surely into some ridiculous stage business, and he hated all that sort of gush!
Poor Mrs. Trevelyan! Yet, she had her good points well as her bad. Should he judge her too harshly? If you only knew would n’t you find some reason for her being the way she was? He had really liked her—until last evening. She should n’t have tried that—no, she should n’t have tried that! It was better to leave things as they were.
The cab rumbled on down the avenue, through unending side streets, across car tracks and cobble stones, until it stopped in front of the big pier with its flashing rows of myriad electric lights.
“Wait a minute,” said Micky as he climbed out. “I ’ll be back in a minute and give you the money.”
“No, you don’t!” remarked the cabby. “Me an’ you will go along together.”
“Oh, very well,” answered bis fare. “Come on. Perhaps sometime you ’ll want to take a state-room on the boat.”
They climbed the stairs to the upper story, passed the watchman who looked suspiciously at the shabby fellow carrying his whip in his hand and thence ascended the gang-plank to the Pavoina.
“This way, my friend,” said Micky, leading him to the purser’s office.
The rat faced purser was hard at work at his accounts and did not look up at his visitor’s approach.
“Hello there, old chap!” called Micky through the grating. “Come over here a minute like a good fellow; I want to speak to you.”
“Wait a minute, Micky,” answered the other meditatively still counting,—“and nine is sixty-seven.” He wrote it down, stuck the pencil behind his ear and stepped to the window. “What do you want—money?”
“Yes,” said Micky. “Among other things.”
“What are the others?” laughed the purser. “Perhaps they ’re easier to get.”
“Well,” replied Micky In his most casual manner, “I want to engage Saloon A 1—and the rooms that go with it for the return voyage. You call it the ‘bridal suite’ don’t you?”
The purser looked at him reprovingly.
“What kind of a joke is that?” he asked. “Are you tight?”
“Have n’t had a drink since we left Naples,” answered Micky. “This is on the level.”
The purser eyed him suspiciously.
“Who for?” he inquired.
“Myself,” said Micky with dignity.
“You make me sick!” snapped the purser. “Confound you! What business have you to try and be funny at my expense.”
“I ’m not kidding,” answered Micky. “I want to engage it—honor bright.”
“Go soak your head!” rapped out the other.
“Are you going to take my order or not?” inquired Micky loftily.
The purser shoved a yellow blank towards him under the grating.
“All right, smarty,” he retorted; “sign an application if you want it.”
Micky took up, the pen and hesitated a moment as if trying to recollect something he had almost forgotten. Then he filled out the slip carefully, taking a long time about it, and slid it back to the purser. At the bottom, after the words “Signature of applicant,” appeared in Micky’s labored scrawl the name:
Michael Fitzpatrick St. Giles Stanley Hamilton, Earl of Roakby, Viscount Chiselhurst, Baron Montagu.
“You see,” semi-apologetically, “that Roakby chap who was shot in England the other day happened to be my uncle.—Now Shylock, old chap,” he added patiently, “just give me a month’s wages to pay my cabby, will you?”
The End