A story with a moral: If you want to win that girl, don't talk about yourself, talk about her
A Troublesome Widow
by Edgar Jepson
Illustrations by James E. Allen
UNDER THE low, large stars the Christabel lifted lightly to the swell, and Captain Duce, sweating and itching, pursued social knowledge through the pages of a novel.
He had landed the arms; he could read in what peace the stifling heat and the mosquitoes gave him.
The lights of Valdivia, mere glowworms against those large stars, twinkled faintly. They were reinforced suddenly by the flashes of a machine gun on the jetty, and the sinister rattle broke up the stillness and came echoing back from the hills.
Captain Duce pricked up his ears, frowning. Yes: it was a machine gun. He turned a page and read on.
The machine gun rattled away.
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Captain Duce frowned at sight of the rescued
girl. He had little use for women aboard the
Christabel, especially attractive women.
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There came a pinging rap on the plates of the Christabel and another and another and another, till they rapped like hailstones on a windowpane.
Captain Duce seemed to put down the book, pick up the megaphone, spring across the deck, and loose off the quick-firer in one movement.
The shell screamed over the town and crashed and crashed again among the hills.
The machine gun stopped; the watch rose from behind the bulwarks; the rest of the crew came tumbling up; all made for the stand of rifles amidships. Captain Duce spoke Spanish through the megaphone. It was not good Spanish, but nervous. It disposed briefly of the legitimacy of the Valdivians and made it clear that if they chipped any more paint off his ship he would knock their malodorous town of the map of South America.
The machine gunners understood and fired no, more, but they did not answer. They had peppered the Christabel unwittingly. In their zeal they had failed to perceive that their target was in a direct line between them and her.
A faint cry of distress came across the dim and oily swell-a woman’s cry, not half a cable's length from the steamer.
"Lower a boat and see what the trouble is, Mr. Evans," Captain Duce said to his second officer.
In seven minutes the boat was back, and Mr. Evans was coming up the ladder carrying a woman.
Captain Duce frowned; he had little use for women anywhere, much less on the Christabel. He knew his officers; he had not, chosen them for the amiability of their dispositions or the gentleness of their manners, but for qualities which made them good assistants in running guns. Mr. Flanagan, the first officer, was a hot-headed, impulsive Irishman, temperamental. Mr. Evans, the second, was a hot-headed, impulsive Welshman, temperamental. Confront them with even a near-attractive woman, and they would show temperament, and even in the dim light he could see that this was a near-attractive woman.
Mr. Evans stepped on to the deck and said: "It iss a woman. She hass got it in the neck. Leastways, she iss bleeding like a pig whateffer."
"Take her into the spare cabin," said Captain Duce, and went into his cabin for a small case of surgical instruments, bottles and a roll of bandages. Morton, the steward, hurried for hot water; Evans laid the woman on the bed. She had fainted, and was bleeding the left arm and left shoulder. She was not near-attractive but attractive and young. Captain Duce began to cut away the frock over the shoulder. His small, strong, well-kept hands worked deftly.
A sailor came in and dumped a suitcase on the floor.
"It wass in the boat. There wass a small fat Dago in the boat and two Dago boatmen. They had got theirs whateffer," said Mr. Evans in conversational accents. "The boat sank just as we pulled the leddy and the case out of it. The leddy had the luck whateffer."
Morton brought a jug of hot water and towels. Captain Duce bared a white shoulder. There was a small hole high up in it, bleeding. He turned the girl over and found that the bullet had gone clean through, missing the lung.
"No harm there," he said.
The shoulder was not bleeding fast; the arm was. A bullet had drilled the biceps; another had grooved it. He washed the wounds and bandaged them, stopping the flow of blood. He turned to the shoulder. It was a clean wound; but the splinters of bone were in it. It would be slow healing. He took a pair of thumb forceps and felt for them, The lady came to and cried out with the pain.
"Easy. It'll save you trouble later," he said, and held her firm and went on plying the forceps.
She writhed and cried out as he cleaned the wound of some of the splinters. Then he washed and bandaged it. She was quiet.
"Some surgeon whateffer," said Mr. Evans.
"Easy. Ambulance-course training," said Captain Duce. "I'd take that blood-soaked frock off, only she mightn't like it. Mightn't be much underneath in this climate," he added doubtfully; then, in Spanish: "I'll let you put yourself to bed, Senora."
"Si, si, senor.," she said faintly.
He gave her a dose of sal volatile; Morton cleared up the cabin, and they left her. As he went out, captain Duce "picked up the suitcase and took it with him. That machine gun might be mere political animosity, or there might be finance behind it. South American politicians seldom came away empty-handed; there might be plenty of trouble ahead.
As he shut the door of the lady's cabin Evans said, "She iss wearing a wedding ring. Perhaps she wass the wife of that little Dago."
"Good God, I hope not!" said Captain 'Duce, startled. "She'd be a widow, and I don't like widows."
One of the watch said that three boats had put off from the jetty and were rowing about the harbor.
"Don't let anyone come aboard and don't answer any questions, Mr. Evans. Just call me," said Captain Duce, and he went into his cabin and bolted the door.
The suitcase contained many silk garments. He raised them and uncovered a sheaf of paper. The top sheet was richly and fancifully decorated, and the other sheets were exactly like it. He counted them, twice. There were a hundred and eleven of them-Liberty Bonds, each of one thousand dollars.
The President had looted the Treasury before leaving.
On second thought, they might be his savings. South American politicians often saved up against a rainy day.
Thoughtfully Captain Duce put the bonds back in the suitcase and dropped it into a locker and locked it.
Mr. Evans knocked at the door and said that there was a boat alongside. Captain Duce heard voices bawling in Spanish and a poor English. He walked quietly to the port quarter and looked down into a big boat full of men armed with rifles.
He did not ask them what they wanted. In workmanlike but expletive Spanish he asked them what they meant by firing on his ship. For some minutes they were at cross-purposes. He wished to know what they meant by spoiling his paint, and what they proposed to do about it. Had they brought the money to pay for the repainting, and if not, when were they going to bring it? Did they think that he had sold them the finest machine guns for a mere song for them to start knocking the paint off his ship the moment they had them?
At last the stout man who had been dancing with hysterical abandon in the stern sheets of the boat, as he tried to outquestion Captain Duce and make it clear that it was not his paint that was of prime importance but the boat they had fired at, a boat which had been making for the Christabel, gave it up and sat down.
Captain Duce came to the end of his breath in time. Thereupon the stout man apologized, hoarsely, for the error of the machine gunners and promised to lay the matter of the payment for the damage before the Revolutionary Committee in control of the town. Appeased, Captain Duce let him get in his question about the boat.
Yes; Captain Duce had seen a boat-at least, his boat's crew had seen one. The boat sank just as they reached it; it looked to be full of dead men. "You didn't save one of them, Senor?"
"Not a Single man," said Captain Duce truthfully. "They sank like stones." "Did any of your men see what they were like?". Captain Duce turned to Mr. Evans and spoke to him; then he said: "My officer says that one looked to be a caballero, short and fat, and two were boatmen."
"Short and fat! Madre de Dios! It was the President!" cried the stout man. A hubbub arose in the boat. Three or four voices cried out that the money was lost-they seemed to know their President-at the bottom of the harbor. An excited discussion followed; someone suggested that the President had been rescued; they must search the Christabel.
Captain Duce thought hard. He told Mr. Evans to get up the rest of the crew quickly and arm them.
The stout man stood up again; he said: "we must request you to let us search your ship, Senor."
IT WAS; indeed, Carmencita found it thrilling. Her mother had died when she was twelve; till her marriage she had lived at Guayaquil the strictly guarded life of the Spanish girl; her marriage had been free from romance; after it, her jealous husband had contrived to keep her life nearly as guarded. And here she was, free, with two splendid men trying to win her favor. She was dazzled; she had never had an affair of the heart, and here were two. She was too much of a woman to suffer from that embarrassment of riches. With inborn skill she played one against the other.
"Very well, Senor," said Captain Duce haughtily. "Three of you may come aboard, unarmed."
He muttered a word to the crew, and with a jingling of rifles they lined the bulwarks above the boat. Then he told Mr. Evans to be slow with the ladder, and hurried to the cabin of the rescued lady. He found her awake, but very pale,
"Some Valdivians are going to search the vessel. Will they know you?" he asked.
"Si, senor," she said faintly.
"Well, hide your face with your hair and pretend to sleep."
She nodded and settled down on the pillow and feebly pulled her hair over her face. He added the finishing touches, leaving most of the cheek bare but every salient feature hidden. Taking the bloodied frock, he locked it up with the suitcase, then hurried to the head of the ladder to see the stout man and two of his friends coming up it. He told Mr. Evans to show them every corner of the ship, and to give them a good dose of the hold and the engine room; he would show them the deck cabins himself.
Captain Duce, wearing a contemptuous air, handed the Valdivians over to Mr. Evans, and after telling Morton to bring soda water and glasses, went back to his cabin and set a bottle of whisky and a flashlight on the table. Then he took up his book.
It was not till three-quarters of an hour later that Mr. Evans appeared at the door of his cabin with the three Valdivians, very hot and dirty and bedraggled.
"You'd like to see the deck cabins," said Captain Duce amiably, taking up the flashlight "But we must go quietly. My wife sleeps badly in this oven, and if she is awakened she is angry."
The stout man gave him a look of understanding.
Before the cabin of the rescued girl the captain made the stout man stoop down so that he could see that there was no one under the bed, opened the door very gently, ran the ray slowly round the cabin, let it rest for two or three seconds on the head on the pillow, then very gently shut the door. He showed them the cabin of Mr. Evans and the red head of the sleeping Mr. Flanagan, then took them into his own cabin and gave them whisky and soda.
They were indeed grateful, and the stout man sat on the locker which held the Liberty Bonds. He protested that their search had been purely formal, and they left the vessel, satisfied with their search but unhappy at their failure to find their President-and the money.
The lights of Valdivia burned through the night, and there was a bustle in the town. Captain Duce went to bed. He rose three times to look to the wounded girl. With the light he conned the Christabel through the channel into the Pacific.
When she was settled on her course to the north, he went to his patient's cabin and found her awake, her cheeks less bloodless. In the light of day she did not look so Spanish; her eyes were blue, her hair dark brown. She was more than pretty, and she looked to him intelligent and quick-tempered.
In his halting Spanish he said: "We are out of the harbor, and I have your money safe."
"Madre de Dois!" she said; then in English, "But how fortunate!" She added: "And my husband -the President -did the revolutionaries get him?"
"I'm afraid they got him."
"He is dead?"
He nodded.
She looked at him with somber eyes. After a pause she said: "I do not pretend to sorrow. Senor Morales was a pig; I detested him. It was a marriage of -how do you say it? -of force. No; of compulsion. Yes; of compulsion. And his jealousy-abominable, I assure you. But you would not understand. No."
"I suppose you'd like me to land you at some port -Panama -Colon? I'm going back to England through the Canal," said Captain Duce hopefully.
She looked at him doubtfully, frowning, and said that she did not know what to do; she did not understand why the revolutionaries had not taken her and the money. He told her that they had not seemed to know anything about her being with the President and had accepted his statement that she was his sleeping wife without looking at her.
"But they will learn from Guayaquil that I was with Senor Morales -my husband -as soon as the telegraph is repaired. He cut the wires in three places as we came over the mountains. The navy will come after us, or they will take me on the way to Panama."
Captain Duce could have kicked himself for not thinking to tell the stout Valdivian that she had sunk with the President. The navy of Ecuador was not good, but they had a destroyer or two that could easily catch the Christabel before she reached Panama. Probably also they would seize the Christabel and try to confiscate her for helping the President's wife to escape. "I could get to Callao all right, probably, and land you there," he said.
SHE SHOOK her head feebly and said: "The Peruvians hated Senor Morales. He took the mines above Coarocro They would give me up."
She had talked too much. He told her not to worry but to go to sleep; he would find a way out.
He changed the course of the Christabel. He was going to play for time- a little hide and seek on the Pacific expanse. Two hours later he changed the course again, steering due west.
He went to the lady's cabin, and she awoke at the opening of the door. He asked what she wished him to do.
"Is there much money?" she said.
"A hundred and eleven thousand dollars, I make it."
Her eyes shone, and she said: -"But that makes it easy. You take me to England in this ship. I pay you two thousand dollars, three thousand, five -whatever is right. I would not land alone anywhere in South America with that money. It would be stolen. I will go to my mother's family- Penhaligons they are in Cornwall. I shall be safe there. You will take me?"
"I'll think about it."
"Oh, but you will help me! I know you will!"
"I'll think it over," he said, and left her.
A little thought showed him that he must take her to England as she wished, and the only safe way was round the Horn. He decided to take measures.
The quick-firer, which had adorned his deck only as a pledge of good faith- the good faith of the revolutionaries -sank with its platform into the hold; painters set about brightening the unobtrusive gray of the steamer with three broad vermilion stripes round her smokestack and a broad vermilion stripe round her hull; the carpenter was raising the deck house eighteen inches with a false roof, before they painted it white; a deck hand was erasing her name. Before noon the next day the gray Christabel had vanished from the face of the Pacific, and the gayer Hester Pritchard was steaming down it in her place.
That evening Captain Duce, having locked up the Liberty bonds, took the suitcase to Senora Morales and went into the matter of these bonds. She took the reasonable view that they were hers: she had married the President because if she had not he would have sent her sick father to prison, where he would have died at once, and when, presently, he did die, had taken possession of her property, which the revolutionaries would now confiscate. The bonds represented her property.
His mind at ease, Captain Duce went into the question of whether the new government would be able to trace the bonds. She thought it would find it difficult; on the evening of their flight, her sagacious husband had emptied into the Treasury ten barrels of the best paraffin his country produced, and set fire to it, destroying all records and also diverting the attention of his fellow citizens from his departure. Nevertheless, Captain Duce thought she would be wise to get rid of the bonds a few at a time. In the meantime, she had better say nothing to anyone about them.
Then he told her that he would take her to England if she would pay the extra cost of the journey round the Horn. Joyfully she accepted the offer.
That gave Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Evans the opportunity to make themselves agreeable to her, and they set about doing so with enthusiasm.
Captain Duce watched the progress of the affair with interest and curiosity and in expectation of trouble. The weather was good; the Hester Pritchard ate up the miles peacefully, giving the two mates little to do. They could spend most of their time when on duty- and all of it when not- with the invalid, and they did. Her couch was against the wall of the captain's cabin, and the ports were open; he could hear everything they said, and they knew it, so that it was no matter of eavesdropping.
Their methods of winning the lady's heart interested him, or rather their method, for both tried to make themselves valued by telling her the history of their lives. Hour in, hour out, they were impressing on her what splendid fellows they were by the narration of some striking incident in their careers, afloat or ashore.
Neither of them seemed aware that there was a history of the lady's life, and Captain Duce heard nothing of it, as he would have preferred to do if he must have histories of lives poured into his ears. Their lives soon bored him. He thought they must bore the lady.
If they did, she did not let it be known; her murmur of wonder or admiration came as pat at the fourth narration of an incident as at the first. They were the only amusement she had. and Captain Duce thought it must be indeed flattering to her to have two such adventurous men absorbed in her.
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There was a stamping on the deck, the sound
of fists upon flesh and a scream from Carmencita.
The expected outburst between
her hot-headed, jealous admirers,
Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Evans, came with fury.
continued on page 101
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For eight days. Then she became aware of Captain Duce. Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Evans had exhausted their romantic possibilities. Captain Duce awoke her curiosity, and his insensibility, in the face of the passion his two officers so openly lavished on her, was not only remarkable but annoying.
She seemed to be of no interest to him. None of the three of them seemed to be of any interest to him. He sat with them at their meals, silent in the midst of their liveliest talk. What did he think about as he sat there so silent? Could he be in love and thinking of the girl?
But in truth he was greatly interested in them. Mr.Flanagan and Mr. Evans were long past speaking to each other; now, if either had to ask the other to pass the butter, he asked him in accents coldly murderous. The lively talk was duologues between one or the other of them and Carmencita. Captain Duce was faintly amused, but he was wondering how much longer she could go on playing them against each other before they broke out.
He must do his best to prevent murder, for he would have to hand the survivor over to the authorities, and that would frustrate his design of getting Carmencita with her Liberty bonds, off the Hester Pritchard without the government of Ecuador ever learning that she had been on her. Not that he had any great personal interest in Carmencita; but he did like to do a job thoroughly.
Carmencita's interest grew, and discreetly and with the most casual air she tried to satisfy her curiosity. Mr. Flanagan had a vague story that the captain had been the son of a rich ship-owner who went bankrupt and died when his son had been at school, and that young Duce had left school and gone into the Mercantile Marine. On getting his master's certificate he had gone into partnership with an arms merchant, fitted out the Christabel; he did the gunrunning part of the business, and did it damn well. Mr. Evans could only tell her that there was a story about Duce having half killed a man in Shanghai, a captain who had hazed him when he was an apprentice. He'd got that scar on his forehead in doing it. That did not lessen her interest in him.
Then, almost suddenly, the difference between him and her large admirers struck her: his lean, small head and their well-covered large ones; his small, lean, well-kept hands and their large, fat, rough ones; his quiet sureness and their rather noisy self-assertion. It dawned on her that he was much the better man. As a woman does, she began to crave the best man in her circle.
Then, rounding the Horn, the Hester Pritchard ran into bad weather and Carmencita was very seasick. Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Evans were assiduous, and she hated them. Captain Duce did not come near her, and she hated him.
It was only natural that when they ran into good weather and she recovered and came out of her cabin, she should be cruel first to Mr. Flanagan, then to Mr. Evans. Mr. Flanagan ascribed her cruelty to Mr. Evans, Mr. Evans to Mr. Flanagan, and the outburst came.
Captain Duce was in the chart room when he heard a stamping on the deck and the sound of fists upon flesh, then a scream from Carmencita, as she ran into her cabin and banged her door and shot the bolt. He looked out and saw Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Evans fighting in the waist, attended by the delighted watch, and the rest of the crew arriving.
He was relieved; they might fight with their fists till the cows came home.
He knew exactly what he was going to do, and he went to his cabin and took two pairs of handcuffs from a drawer and dropped them into his pocket; then he watched the fight through the door of the deck house. He let them hit each other until both were groggy.
Then he went briskly down the deck, and saying, "Stop this! stop this!" stepped between them.
It fell out as he had expected; both were too mazed to perceive his interposition; Mr. Flanagan hit him and Mr. Evans hit him, feebly but unmistakably. He stepped back and cried sharply: "Mutiny! Put them in irons, Mr. Jackson!" and passed the handcuffs to the boatswain.
In less than three minutes they were overpowered and handcuffed and locked in their cabins. Captain Duce and Carmencita dined alone, and politeness compelled him to talk to her. She seemed but little distressed by the plight of her admirers, and heard that they would be put ashore at Port Louis with an indifference that proclaimed her heart-whole.
The next morning the Hester Pritchard reached Port Louis and Captain Duce went ashore. He found himself in luck; an old freight steamer, the Doreen, had foundered fifty miles from the port; her crew had reached it in her boats. Before he had arranged for the coaling, the delighted skipper and first mate of the Doreen were the first and second officers of the Hester Pritchard.
Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Evans, softened by soreness, handcuffs, bread and water, and the knowledge that they had violated every canon of maritime decency, heard with relief that the captain did not propose to log them for mutiny and hand them over to the authorities for trial, but to put them ashore with their dunnage, their pay, and their bonus for successfully running the guns.
They thanked him warmly and went ashore after dark. Carmencita's farewell was distinguished rather by politeness than by sorrow; but they were not deeply hurt. Their passion was at the moment in eclipse; they were sheepish; they felt that their behavior had not been quite gentlemanly.
The next morning the Hester Pritchard left the Falkland Islands on her long climb up the world, her captain's mind at ease in the assurance that he was now free from all trouble in the matter of his passenger. He did not dream that she was rejoicing immensely that she now had him to herself.
She was right. Mr. Baggett and Mr. Simpson, the new mates, married men with families, did not count. At meals, oppressed by the need for manners, they said little. Captain. Duce felt bound to lighten the loss of the admirers of whom he had rid her, and he talked to her, not only at meals, but now and then during the day and evening he would bethink himself of his politeness and spend an hour lightening that loss.
By accident he hit on a fascinating subject-fascinating at any rate to her. Having no small talk, in his direct manner he talked about her. And how flattering his interest was! Carmencita thought-so much more flattering than the hearty passion of her lost admirers.
He grew interested in the subject himself. He had a curious and unusual mind; he wished to know things, a great many things. Also, he was so used to allowing no serious place for a woman in his carefully planned life that he did not observe that he was becoming more and more aware of the fact that he had an uncommonly pretty teacher, and was spending more and more of his time with greater and greater pleasure in her society.
She was slowly satisfying her curiosity, which had grown keener and keener, about him. Unlike her lost admirers, he seemed under no impulsion whatever to tell her the history of his life. But she obtained facts, one at a time, by questions judiciously inserted in the discussion of the main subject. She learned of his strange desire to know a great many things; also she learned that he had a definite scheme of life and was resolved to let nothing interfere with carrying it through: he was going to have a little place in the country near a golf course, with a good library, and spend two months every summer in the capitals of Europe.
Golf had no appeal for her; but she would be with him. And to spend two months every year with him in a European capital! In Paris-the dream of the South American!
He found the voyage, as a rule so slow, passing very quickly. For her time flew. He never thought of making love to her, but at times he was surprised at the violence of his desire to do so; it taxed his natural self-control to the limit.
She was astonished, amazed even, that he did not. There were times when she was stricken by a dreadful fear-when, for example, she had gone to bed, aching for his kisses, but unkissed -that their association really meant little to him. But she assured herself that it was all right, that he was like that, that these men of action were -undemonstrative; he must be very, very fond of her.
So they came in a cold dawn into Falmouth harbor, and the bustle and press of business that awaited him in London left in him no room for the softer emotions.
She took her fill, in one of his overcoats, of her first sight of England, then went back to her cabin to keep warm while the Christabel was berthed. He came to it later with her Liberty bonds. She packed them in her suitcase. The night before, she had suggested that he should take her to the Penhaligons, since she would feel horribly ill at ease descending on them alone, and he had said it was unlikely that he would have the time, for he had a hundred things to arrange before he could hurry off to London to his partner, who must be furiously impatient to see him. But she had never doubted that he would make time.
At breakfast his mind was full of his business, but he told her he had wired to the Penhaligons that she was coming, and her local train left in three-quarters of an hour, an hour before the express he was catching to London.
"But aren't you coming with me?" she said blankly.
"I'm afraid I haven't the time."
She swallowed her disappointment and said: "And when will you come to St. Brendan's?"
"There's very little chance of my finding time to do that."
"Then I will come to London," she said.
He looked at her doubtfully and said: "I expect I shall be rushed off my feet. Roberts will have another cargo waiting for me to get off with at once."
Suddenly she understood: it was over.
She was dazed by the shock- the world went dim. She was vaguely aware that Mr. Baggett called him away. Presently she found herself sitting on her bed in her cabin trying to grasp the dreadful fact, trying not to grasp it. Then a sailor came to carry her suitcase to the station.
She was just aware that she must not let Captain Duce even guess her feeling for him, and she pulled herself together and went on deck. She even contrived to force her face into the semblance of a smile when she shook hands with him and said good-by. She did not thank him; she could not trust her voice.
As she turned her back and stepped on to the gangway there was a sudden violent upheaval in the depths of Captain Duce's being; he seemed to awake with a shock; something was going out of his life -something that must not go.
Then, in the middle of the gangway, she stumbled, and burst out crying.
He stared at her as she walked along the quay, seeing the pitiful way her shoulders were shaking. They seemed to pluck at his heartstrings. He had not known that he had heartstrings.
"Oh, hell!" he said loudly, and ran across the gangway and along the quay. He overtook her and caught her arm and turned her round and said: "Stop it! You're coming to London with me! Stop it!"
Not for a dozen yards did she understand that he was with her that she was not going to be alone. She raised her eyes, already beginning to shine, and said, choking a little, "You're really very fond of me, George?"
"I should jolly well think I am!" said Captain Duce.
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