The Crusade of the Excelsior Part 19

Half reclining on a sofa in the parlor of an elaborate suite of apartments was the woman whom Mr. Brimmer had a few hours before beheld on the stage of the theatre. Lifting her eyes languidly from a book that lay ostentatiously on her lap, she beckoned her visitor to approach.

She was a woman still young, whose statuesque beauty had but slightly suffered from cosmetics, late hours, and the habitual indulgence of certain hysterical emotions that were not only inconsistent with the cla.s.sical suggestions of her figure, but had left traces not unlike the grosser excitement of alcoholic stimulation. She looked like a tinted statue whose slight mutations through stress of time and weather had been unwisely repaired by freshness of color.

"I am such a creature of nerves," she said, raising a superb neck and extending a G.o.ddess-like arm, "that I am always perfectly exhausted after the performance. I fly, as you see, to my first love--poetry--as soon as Rosina has changed my dress. It is not generally known--but I don't mind telling YOU--that I often nerve myself for the effort of acting by reading some well-remembered pa.s.sage from my favorite poets, as I stand by the wings. I quaff, as one might say, a single draught of the Pierian spring before I go on."

The exact relations between the humorous "walk round," in which Miss Montgomery usually made her first entrance, and the volume of Byron she held in her hand, did not trouble Mr. Brimmer so much as the beautiful arm with which she emphasized it. Neither did it strike him that the distinguis.h.i.+ng indications of a poetic exaltation were at all unlike the effects of a grosser stimulant known as "Champagne c.o.c.ktail" on the less sensitive organization of her colleagues. Touched by her melancholy but fascinating smile, he said gallantly that he had observed no sign of exhaustion, or want of power in her performance that evening.

"Then you were there!" she said, fixing her eyes upon him with an expression of mournful grat.i.tude. "You actually left your business and the calls of public duty to see the poor mountebank perform her nightly task."

"I was there with a friend of yours," answered Brimmer soberly, "who actually asked me to the supper to which Mr. Keene had already invited me, and which YOU had been kind enough to suggest to me a week ago."

"True, I had forgotten," said Miss Montgomery, with a large G.o.ddess-like indifference that was more effective with the man before her than the most elaborate explanation. "You don't mind them--do you?--for we are all friends together. My position, you know," she added sadly, "prevents my always following my own inclinations or preferences. Poor Markham, I fear the world does not do justice to his gentle, impressible nature.

I sympathize with him deeply; we have both had our afflictions, we have both--lost. Good heavens!" she exclaimed, with a sudden exaggerated start of horror, "what have I done? Forgive my want of tact, dear friend; I had forgotten, wretched being that I am, that YOU, too"--

She caught his hand in both hers, and bowed her head over it as if unable to finish her sentence.

Brimmer, who had been utterly mystified and amazed at this picture of Markham's disconsolate att.i.tude to the world, and particularly to the woman before him, was completely finished by this later tribute to his own affliction. His usually composed features, however, easily took upon themselves a graver cast as he kept, and pressed, the warm hands in his own.

"Fool that I was," continued Miss Montgomery; "in thinking of poor Markham's childlike, open grief, I forgot the deeper sorrow that the more manly heart experiences under an exterior that seems cold and impa.s.sible. Yes," she said, raising her languid eyes to Brimmer, "I ought to have felt the throb of that volcano under its mask of snow. You have taught me a lesson."

Withdrawing her hands hastily, as if the volcano had shown some signs of activity, she leaned back on the sofa again.

"You are not yet reconciled to Mr. Keene's expedition, then?" she asked languidly.

"I believe that everything has been already done," said Brimmer, somewhat stiffly; "all sources of sensible inquiry have been exhausted by me. But I envy Keene the eminently practical advantages his impractical journey gives him," he added, arresting himself, gallantly; "he goes with you."

"Truly!" said Miss Montgomery, with the melancholy abstraction of a stage soliloquy. "Beyond obeying the dictates of his brotherly affection, he gains no real advantage in learning whether his sister is alive or dead. The surety of her death would not make him freer than he is now--freer to absolutely follow the dictates of a new affection; free to make his own life again. It is a sister, not a wife, he seeks."

Mr. Brimmer's forehead slightly contracted. He leaned back a little more rigidly in his chair, and fixed a critical, half supercilious look upon her. She did not seem to notice his almost impertinent scrutiny, but sat silent, with her eyes bent on the carpet, in gloomy abstraction.

"Can you keep a secret?" she said, as if with a sudden resolution.

"Yes," said Brimmer briefly, without changing his look.

"You know I am a married woman. You have heard the story of my wrongs?"

"I have heard them," said Brimmer dryly.

"Well, the husband who abused and deserted me was, I have reason to believe, a pa.s.senger on the Excelsior."

"M'Corkle!--impossible. There was no such name on the pa.s.senger list."

"M'Corkle!" repeated Miss Montgomery, with a dissonant tone in her voice and a slight flash in her eyes. "What are you thinking of? There never was a Mr. M'Corkle; it was one of my noms de plume. And where did YOU hear it?"

"I beg your pardon, I must have got it from the press notices of your book of poetry. I knew that Montgomery was only a stage name, and as it was necessary that I should have another in making the business investments you were good enough to charge me with, I used what I thought was your real name. It can be changed, or you can sign M'Corkle."

"Let it go," said Miss Montgomery, resuming her former manner. "What matters? I wish there was no such thing as business. Well," she resumed, after a pause, "my husband's name is Hurlstone."

"But there was no Hurlstone on the pa.s.senger list either," said Brimmer.

"I knew them all, and their friends."

"Not in the list from the States; but if he came on board at Callao, you wouldn't have known it. I knew that he arrived there on the Osprey a few days before the Excelsior sailed."

Mr. Brimmer's eyes changed their expression.

"And you want to find him?"

"No," she said, with an actress's gesture. "I want to know the truth. I want to know if I am still tied to this man, or if I am free to follow the dictates of my own conscience,--to make my life anew,--to become--you see I am not ashamed to say it--to become the honest wife of some honest man."

"A divorce would suit your purpose equally," said Brimmer coldly. "It can be easily obtained."

"A divorce! Do you know what that means to a woman in my profession? It is a badge of shame,--a certificate of disgrace,--an advertis.e.m.e.nt to every miserable wretch who follows me with his advances that I have no longer the sanct.i.ty of girlhood, nor the protection of a wife."

There was tragic emotion in her voice, there were tears in her eyes. Mr.

Brimmer, gazing at her with what he firmly thought to be absolute and incisive penetration, did not believe either. But like most practical a.n.a.lysts of the half-motived s.e.x, he was only half right. The emotion and the tears were as real as anything else in the woman under criticism, notwithstanding that they were not as real as they would have been in the man who criticised. He, however, did her full justice on a point where most men and all women misjudged her: he believed that, through instinct and calculation, she had been materially faithful to her husband; that this large G.o.ddess-like physique had all the impeccability of a G.o.ddess; that the hysterical dissipation in which she indulged herself was purely mental, and usurped and preoccupied all other emotions. In this public exposition of her beauty there was no sense of shame, for there was no sense of the pa.s.sion it evoked. And he was right. But there he should have stopped. Unfortunately, his masculine logic forced him to supply a reason for her coldness in the existence of some more absorbing pa.s.sion. He believed her ambitious and calculating: she was neither. He believed she might have made him an admirable copartner and practical helpmeet: he was wrong.

"You know my secret now," she continued. "You know why I am anxious to know my fate. You understand now why I sympathize with"--she stopped, and made a half contemptuous gesture--"with these men Markham and Keene. THEY do not know it; perhaps they prefer to listen to their own vanity--that's the way of most men; but you do know it, and you have no excuse for misjudging me, or undeceiving them." She stopped and looked at the clock. "They will be here in five minutes; do you wish them to find you already here?"

"It is as YOU wish," stammered Brimmer, completely losing his self-possession.

"I have no wish," she said, with a sublime gesture of indifference. "If you wait you can entertain them here, while Rosina is dressing me in the next room. We sup in the larger room across the hall."

As she disappeared, Quincy Brimmer rose irresolutely from his seat and checked a half uttered exclamation. Then he turned nervously to the parlor-door. What a senseless idiot he had become! He had never for an instant conceived the idea of making this preliminary confidential visit known to the others; he had no wish to suggest the appearance of an a.s.signation with the woman, who, rightly or wrongly, was notorious; he had nothing to gain by this voluntary a.s.sumption of a compromising att.i.tude; yet here he was, he--Mr. Brimmer--with the appearance of being installed in her parlor, receiving her visitors, and dispensing her courtesies. Only a man recklessly in love would be guilty of such an indiscretion--even Markham's feebleness had never reached this absurdity. In the midst of his uneasiness there was a knock at the door; he opened it himself nervously and sharply. Markham's self-satisfied face drew back in alarm and embarra.s.sment at the unexpected apparition.

The sight restored Brimmer's coolness and satirical self-possession.

"I--I--didn't know you were here," stammered Markham. "I left Keene in your room."

"Then why didn't you bring him along with you?" said Brimmer maliciously. "Go and fetch him."

"Yes; but he said you were to meet him there," continued Markham, glancing around the empty room with a slight expression of relief.

"My watch was twenty minutes fast, and I had given him up," said Brimmer, with mendacious effrontery. "Miss Montgomery is dressing. You can bring him here before she returns."

Markham flew uneasily down the corridor and quickly returned with a handsome young fellow of five-and-twenty, whose frank face was beaming with excitement and youthful energy. The two elder men could not help regarding him with a mingled feeling of envy and compa.s.sion.

"Did you tell Brimmer yet?" said Keene, with animation.

"I haven't had time," hesitated Markham. "The fact is, Brimmer, I think of going with Keene on this expedition."

"Indeed!" said Brimmer superciliously.

"Yes," said Markham, coloring slightly. "You see, we've got news. Tell him, d.i.c.k."

"The Storm Cloud got in yesterday from Valparaiso and Central American ports," said Keene, with glowing cheeks. "I boarded her, as usual, last night, for information. The mate says there is a story of a man picked up crazy, in an open fis.h.i.+ng-boat, somewhere off the peninsula, and brought into hospital at San Juan last August. He recovered enough lately to tell his story and claim to be Captain Bunker of the Excelsior, whose crew mutinied and ran her ash.o.r.e in a fog. But the boat in which he was picked up was a Mexican fis.h.i.+ng-boat, and there was something revolutionary and political about the story, so that the authorities detained him. The consul has just been informed of the circ.u.mstances, and has taken the matter in hand."

"It's a queer story," said Brimmer, gazing from the one to the other, "and I will look into it also to-morrow. If it is true," he added slowly, "I will go with you."

Richard Keene extended his hand impulsively to his two elders.