Prince or Chauffeur? Part 6

"He's asleep, I tell you. What do you want?"

"Well, I want to borrow your tub and Billy's razors."

"Why didn't you say so? Ring the bell and come right up. I 'll have some towels put in. And say, Jack, really--"

"What?"

"I hope you drown, waking me this way. And, Jack, stay to breakfast, won't you, like a good chap?"

Which Jack did. An hour or so later, fresh and cool and with that comfortable feeling which follows a well-cooked Navy breakfast,--bacon and eggs,--his pipe sending blue clouds into the sparkling air, Armitage walked over to the torpedo boat slips. Across the harbor lay the city, bathed in golden suns.h.i.+ne, the tree-clad streets rising tier by tier to the crown, Bellevue Avenue. His gaze wandered seaward and for the first time since sunset he thought of Anne Wellington. Would he ever see her again? What was she doing now, he wondered. No doubt she would attend service at Trinity; many of the cottagers did. He, too, would go to church there. He had not been lately; it would do him good, he told himself.

Thus thinking, he stepped aboard the black, ominous, oily _D'Estang_, made his way aft and clambered down the companion ladder. There was the usual Sunday morning gathering of young officers from the boats of the flotilla. The smoke, mainly from pipes--three weeks having elapsed since pay day--was thick, and an excited argument, not over speeding records, or coal consumption, but over the merits of an English vaudeville actor who had appeared the week before at Freebody Park, was in progress.

"h.e.l.lo, Jack," said a tall dark officer in spotless white uniform, "how 's the tame torpedo this morning?"

"Fine, fine, Blackie," grinned Armitage. "How's that tin cup, misnamed the _Jefferson_, to-day?"

"Did n't eat out of your hand last night, did she?" observed Tommy Winston of the _Adams_, attired in blue trousers and a flannel s.h.i.+rt.

"No, but she will," said Armitage.

"No doubt," replied Winston with his quaint Southern drawl. "Look here, Jackie, where you going this morning, all dressed up in gorgeous cits clothes?"

"To church," replied Armitage, "to Trinity; any one want to go with me?" he asked, ignoring the derisive chorus.

There was a moment's silence and then Bob Black looked at him quizzically.

"Does any one want to go with you?" he jeered. "Who 's the girl?"

"I wonder--But seriously, I have never been to the service there and since the Wellingtons asked me to drop into their pew any Sunday, I--"

"The Wellingtons!" exclaimed Thornton of the submarine _Polyp_. "You don't mean the Ronald Wellingtons?"

"No, I don't mean any Wellingtons at all. I was joking. Why?"

"Then you did n't hear of Thornton's run in with them last week?" said Winston. "That's so, you were in Was.h.i.+ngton."

"What was it, Joe?" asked Armitage, turning to Thornton.

"Why, nothing much. Two of my men were arrested last Thursday for a.s.saulting the Wellington kids. It seems they were walking past Bailey's Beach and the youngsters bombarded them with clam sh.e.l.ls and gravel. It would have been all right, but one of the sh.e.l.ls caught Kelly on the cheek and cut him. The men didn't do a thing but jump over that hedge into the holy of holies, gather in the young scions, and knock their heads together."

"You don't say! What happened then?"

"They were arrested and the chief sent over here. I got the men's story and then called the Wellingtons' house on the telephone. Mrs.

Wellington's secretary answered. I told her who I was and that I wanted to talk about the case with some one in authority. She asked me to hold the wire and in a few seconds the queen herself was holding pleasant converse with yours truly.

"'You say the men are under your command?' she said.

"I replied, 'Even so.' Then she gave me the name of her lawyer and said Kelly and Burke would be prosecuted on every charge that could be brought to bear."

Armitage laughed.

"Trust her! What did you say?"

"I got hot under the collar right away, then. 'Mrs. Wellington,' I said, 'my men were not to blame. If they were I should not have called you on the 'phone. But your sons threw sh.e.l.ls and cut one of them.

They were punished, and justly. And I now advise you I am going to have counter warrants issued against your boys if the charge is pressed in court to-day!' Just like that.

"Her voice came crisp. 'You say my sons were at fault? Have you any proof of that?'

"I came back in a second. 'I have sufficient proof to convince even your lawyer.'

"'Very well,' she said. 'Then do it. I shall direct him to see you at once. If what you say is true we will of course take no further action.'

"The case was dropped all right."

"Bully for you," said Armitage. "My Lady evidently has a sense of justice."

"Here 's a paragraph," said Winston, holding up a local paper, "which says that a physical instructor is wanted at The Crags. They are going to prepare for future engagements with our men, evidently."

"Well, let me tell you that Anne Wellington is a corker," observed Black suddenly.

"Anne Wellington?" said Armitage ingenuously.

"Yes," continued Black, "the daughter. I saw her at the Casino the other day. She was jos.h.i.+ng some little old rooster who was trying to play tennis and she had him a mile up in the air. She 's beautiful, too. That's more than you can say of most of these alleged society beauties."

"Which reminds me," said Armitage, glancing at his watch, "that I am due for church. Come on, Joe," he added, "be a good chap."

Thornton in the goodness of his nature arose.

"All right," he said. "I'm game." Thornton had been a star full-back at Annapolis when Armitage was an All America end, and he would have gone to worse places than church for his old messmate.

Nowadays he spent his time in sinking the _Polyp_ among the silt on the harbor bottom, for which work his crew received several dollars apiece, extra pay, for each descent. Thornton received not even glory, unless having gone to the floor of Long Island Sound with a President of the United States be held as const.i.tuting glory.

CHAPTER V

AT TRINITY

Old Trinity rests on the hillside, serene in the afterglow of its one hundred and eighty-four years. The spotless white walls, the green blinds, the graceful Colonial spire, are meetly set in an environment which strikes no note of dissonance. On either side are quaint, narrow streets, lined with decent door-yards and houses almost as old as the church. Within the cool interior the cottagers, and representatives of a native aristocracy--direct descendants of the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who are so conservative, so proudly, scornfully aloof, that one would doubt they existed at all, were it not for their stately homes in the older sections of the city, where giant elms keep watch and ward over eave and column and dormer window, where hydrangeas sweep the doorstep, and faun and satyr, rough hewn, peer through the shrubbery--sit primly in the box-like pews with the preacher towering above them under the white sounding board.

The church was not half filled when Armitage and Thornton arrived, but a double line of visitors were standing in the rear aisle. Armitage caught the eye of one of the ushers and beckoned to him. But that frock-coated, austere personage coldly turned his glance elsewhere and Armitage had started forward to enlist his attention in a manner that would admit of no evasion when his companion caught him by the sleeve, chuckling.

"Look here, old chap," he whispered, "you have to wait until they know how many pew-holders are going to be absent. This is n't a theatre."

Armitage turned his head to reply, when a rustling of skirts sounded behind him and Thornton punched him in the ribs.

"The Wellington bunch," he whispered, "and the Russian they have captured."