Wings of the Wind Part 49

"I've seen all that from the beginning, dear," she murmured, putting one hand on my hair and stroking it. "But nothing can prevail against what you call his cold logic. He's certain that he's right, and he has the power to make me go."

"Oh, if I only had the brains to out-argue him!" My voice choked, and I bowed my head in her lap.

For a while we were silent. Her hand continued to stroke my hair, and soon her fingers strayed to my temple and gently pressed it--as if she knew that my head burned and ached, and wanted to make it well.

"You don't have to argue, always my own," I heard her whisper. "There's something stronger than words pleading for you."

I looked up quietly, saying:

"Let's run away to-night! Let's have another rescue, and go back to our Oasis----" But she stopped me by putting her hand over my mouth, although she was breathing fast and the color had flown to her cheeks.

"Don't, don't," she gasped. "I've thought of that so many times!"

"To-night," I begged. "You know I'll always make you happy?"

"Happy?" Her eyes, half closed, held mine with a look that did not try to hide its longing. "There'd be no happiness on earth like that of being entirely yours at our Oasis!"

"Then, sweetheart----"

"No, Jack," she now sat straighter. "I was dreaming. Besides, he'd follow with every officer in Florida. Don't you understand, dear, that he has the _right_? I'm helpless to refuse! I can't--possibly! It's simply awful, but it's got to be."

Yet I believed that she had been on the point of yielding, and was about to urge still further when Monsieur's voice, speaking to Echochee, brought me to my feet.

"Well, my boy Jack," he exclaimed, entering with a cheeriness I found detestable, "we shall leave her now, eh? She has packing to do, and must get early to rest."

His protectorate seemed to brook no opposition, and an angry retort sprang to my lips which remained unspoken when I saw the pallor of Doloria's face.

"Yes," she said, without animation, "I must pack. See you to-morrow--on the march."

So, ignoring him, I pa.s.sed out. But a better humor came to me as I thought of Tommy's scheme about the _Orchid_, and coming upon Echochee at the landing I asked--lightly for her benefit, yet quite seriously for myself:

"Is there any magic in your tribe that can bring a troubled princess sleep and pleasant dreams?"

I knew that she was searching my face with her black little eyes that glistened like a snake's, as she answered slowly:

"Injun maiden find plenty good dream when her head lay on breast of sleeping brave."

"I didn't mean just that," I stammered, feeling my cheeks grow hot. For, albeit, Doloria had slept part of a night with her head against my shoulder when we fared alone in the purity of our wilderness, now, since others of the world were touching elbows with us, Echochee's words knocked me rather into a self-conscious heap. But such is the bitter t.i.the we must toss into the maw of civilization which, despite its mult.i.tude of admitted blessings, breeds also the false! And I stepped into the punt wis.h.i.+ng that this daughter of our oldest American family could be divinely appointed arbiter of our customs.

Smilax returned with word that both yachts would be at Little Cove, and one by one the lights in our camp went out. But I sat late at Efaw Kotee's desk writing a ten-page telegram and a fifty-page letter to my father. Both of these I would despatch from Key West--the wire telling him to bring the Mater to Miami where the letter would await them; and I urged them both, as they loved me, to pick up a certain darling of the G.o.ds named Nell. Only I made it stronger and more explicit than that, and knew they would comply if such a thing were humanly possible. But this pet scheme I intended to keep from Tommy. It would repay him for his masterly scheme of sailing both yachts homeward.

The next morning after an early breakfast our cavalcade set forth, each man carrying a pack except the two sailors on whose shoulders rested the poles of Doloria's chair. But in this chair sat a very sad little princess--this morning particularly, as she was leaving a nominal home for a new and mystifying adventure. Whatever else Efaw Kotee had been to her, at least he stood in her memory of father; and however irrevocably she may have turned against him, the very fact that she found it necessary to do so was a grievous disappointment.

All that had pa.s.sed. Strangers had come, and in a few days she was being borne to the other half of the world. To her mother!--what did she know of a mother? To a throne!--but with an unknown prince to rule beside her? And these were entirely apart from the longings she might leave on this side of the world. Surely, if she needed sympathy at any time it was now as the march began.

Although Monsieur had taken a position close to her, and evidently meant to keep it, before we had gone very far I fell in alongside with them, asking:

"How do you find the march? Tiring?"

"Oh, no, not in Tommy's flying throne, as he calls it,"--and in an undertone she added: "I wish it were the only throne I had to occupy."

But the professor, overhearing this--for little escaped him now--cleared his throat and stepped nearer.

"She is mistaken, my boy Jack," he said suavely. "The march is quite fatiguing, and I must insist that she conserve her strength. There will be no more conversation."

Taken aback by this, I was on the point of giving him a jolly good blowing up, but her ready acquiescence caused me to desist. Really, I began to wonder if he had her hypnotized; and, furious--indeed, quite a good deal hurt--by the cool way she obeyed him and began to ignore me, I marched grimly ahead.

As, three hours later, we neared the cove I saw Tommy sauntering back.

His manner seemed an augury of trouble, and I hurried on to him, asking:

"What's happened?"

"The _Orchid_ isn't there," he turned and fell into step with me. "While getting her out of Big Cove she fouled on a bar. She's still on it, poor dear. So Monsieur sails with us, after all."

For several minutes I stood still in my tracks and swore, stopping only when Doloria's chair came in sight.

"I'm glad you got that out of your system," Tommy grinned. "Now get busy on a new line of attack. We've only three more days, and you'll have to work fast. Surprise her, upset her, then cinch her before she knows what's what. That's the way!" And he hurried back to pay his respects.

The mate and his fellows, even to Pete the cook, escorted us happily down to the small boats. They were honestly glad, and made no pretense of disguising their admiration for Doloria, to the increasing wrath of Echochee.

If ever the men of my own boat crew were on their mettle it was when they sat with oars straight up while I helped her into the gig and took my place at her side--for this was an honor I could not yield to Monsieur, etiquette demanding that, when going aboard, the owner must be her personal escort. With a nod to them they snapped into stroke and we shot away, leaving the old fellow much disgruntled.

At the top of the gangway she hesitated in pretty wonderment before stepping on deck, for the _Whim_ was a smart craft and our sailors had not been idle these few days past.

"Everything's so unreal," she murmured. "My house of cards has come tumbling down about my ears, until I think it must be a dreadful dream."

"To be transported to a sure-enough throne is certainly dreamlike," I said, arranging the cus.h.i.+ons in a chair. "But I hardly think you'll find anything dreadful about it."

"You don't?" she asked pointedly.

"No," I answered. "The dreadful part's for me."

I knew this was not true, or only partially true, but considered it justifiable after Tommy's warning--and Tommy knew a lot about women. I remembered him saying once that a girl's determination could be changed in two ways: by opposition, and by cooperation. I had tried opposition, so now I would pretend to fall resignedly in with Monsieur's plan, taking it for granted that her future promised nothing but idyllic happiness, that memories would pa.s.s, and all that kind of thing. I would become an enigma to her--for this, also, had been one of Tommy's diverse methods of success. Some day, confessing how my triumph had been achieved, we both would laugh over it, and then she would have to admit that Tommy was not the only one who knew a thing or two about women.

So reasoning, I started in at once. For a while she stared at me, her eyes growing wider and wider. Then she arose and went to the rail, remarking coolly:

"Please signal to have Echochee and Monsieur Dragot brought out at once." And that was the only thing she would say.

To h.e.l.l with what Tommy knew about women! She would not so much as look at me again, and when that wretched old rag of a shriveled-up squaw, incarnate fiend of a watchful guardian, arrived my princess retired to her stateroom, nor did she appear again the entire day. What Tommy knew about women, indeed!

The rest of us lunched in moody silence, except Monsieur who grew loquacious to the point of making himself an a.s.s. He was not on the crest of popularity, anyway. Previously, in order to give Doloria more freedom, Tommy and I decided to sleep on deck and use Gates's quarters for a dressing room. But when this proposition was also opened to the professor he flatly refused to join with us. The truth of the matter was that he had determined upon a plan--singularly popular among pedagogues--of watchful waiting; he had made up his mind that Doloria and I should not see each other again except in his presence. He may have told her this--I rather suspected it.

As we sat in the c.o.c.kpit smoking, he became down-right obnoxious by excessive jocularity. It can be disgustingly overdone. Believing that his triumph was a.s.sured, he sputtered and giggled with small regard for my presence, and the farther he went the madder I got. Despite his former protestations of fair play, I now began to nurse a suspicion of this befousled little gimcrack; but I'd not thought that Tommy would grow a distemper of any magnitude until the professor, rubbing his hands, announced:

"_Mon Capitaine_ says we do not sail for an hour. Let us take a small boat and fish around the mangroves! Maybe a snapper, eh?--or a sheep's-head!"

I was silent. Tommy puffed indifferently at his pipe.

"Come," he cried again. "Let us make a fis.h.i.+ng party!"