Robert Barr

“ Oh, Dorothy, must I go to the ball in a dress of print?”
The sewing girl bent an affectionate look on the impulsive Katherine.
“Kate, dear,” she said, “you shall wear the grandest ball dress that ever was seen in Bar Harbor.”
“How dare you call my sister Kate, and talk such nonsense?” demanded Sabina.
“I shall always call you Miss Kempt, and now, if I have your permission, I will sit down. I am tired.”
“Yes, and hungry, too,” cried Katherine. “What shall I get you, Dorothy? This is all cold.” ”

“ Then there was the sound of a plunge, and Lermontoff, standing there, helpless and shivering, heard the prisoner swim round and round his cell like a furious animal, muttering and swearing.
“Don’t exhaust yourself like that,” shouted Lermontoff. “If you want to live, cling to the hole at either of the two upper corners. The water can’t rise above you then, and you can breathe till it subsides.” ”

“ At first sight this city did not strike me as so very much different from New York or London, and meeting, as I did, so many refined gentlemen in high places, I had come to think St. Petersburg was after all very much like Paris, or Berlin, or Rome. But it is different, and the difference makes itself subtly felt, just as the air in some coast towns of Britain is relaxing, and in others bracing. In these towns a man doesn’t notice the effect at first, but later on he begins to feel it, and so it is here in St. Petersburg. Great numbers of workmen pass down our street. ”

“ The Captain drew a long breath, and leaned back in his chair.
“There, Dad, it’s up to you,” said Katherine. “Let us hear your proposal, and then you’ll learn how easy it is to criticise.”
“Well,” said the Captain hesitatingly, “there’s our diplomatic service—”
“Utterly useless: one man is a Russian, and the other an Englishman. Diplomacy not only can do nothing, but won’t even try,” cried Kate triumphantly.
“Yet,” said the Captain, with little confidence, “although the two men are foreigners, the two girls are Americans.”
“We don’t count: we’ve no votes,” said Kate. ”

“ Dorothy laughed.
“Indeed, Katherine, you are anything but that. You couldn’t do a mean or ungenerous action if you tried your best.”
“You think, Dorothy, I could reform?” she asked, breathlessly, leaning forward.
“Reform? You don’t need to reform. You are perfectly delightful as you are, and I know no man who is worthy of you. That’s a woman’s opinion; one who knows you well, and there is nothing dishonest about the opinion, either, in spite of your tirade against our sex.” ”

“ The striking of the match startled Lermontoff as if it had been an explosion; then he laughed, holding the match above his head, and there at his feet saw the loaf of black bread. It seemed as if somebody had twisted the room end for end. The door was where he thought the stream was, and thus he learned that sound gives no indication of direction to a man blindfolded. The match began to wane, and feverishly he lit his cigarette. ”

“ Riches are nothing to me. Bribery may do much in other parts of the Empire, but it is powerless in the Trogzmondoff. I shall die in the room adjoining this, as my predecessor died. I am quite as much a prisoner in the Trogzmondoff as is your Highness. No man who has once set foot in this room, either as Governor, employee, or prisoner, is allowed to see the mainland again, and thus the secret has been well kept. We have had many prisoners of equal rank with your Highness, friends of the Czar too, I dare say, but they all died on the Rock, and were buried in the Baltic. ”

“ If any one attempted to interfere with me, I have only to act the hero of the penny novelette, draw myself up to my full height, which, as you know, is not that of a pigmy, fold my arms across my manly chest, cry, ‘Ha, ha!’ and sing ‘Rule Britannia,’ whereupon the villains would wilt and withdraw. But Jack has no such security. He is a Russian subject, and, prince or commoner, the authorities here could do what they liked with him. I always think of things when it is too late to act. ”

“ I am a changed woman, Dorothy, and thoroughly ashamed of myself. When I remember how I have deluded that poor, credulous young man, in making him believe I understood even the fringe of what he spoke about, it fills me with grief at my perfidy, but I am determined to amend my ways if hard study will do it, and when next I see him I shall talk to him worthily like a female Thomas A. Edison. ”

“ Here a man with a cutlass stands guard. It gives one a notion of the horrors of war, doesn’t it, Dorothy?”
The Lieutenant laughed quite as heartily as if he had not himself hoped to occupy the position now held by the sprightly Katherine. He was cudgelling his brain to solve the problem represented by the adage “Two is company, three is none.” The girls sat together on the settee and gazed out over the brilliantly lighted, animated throng. People were still pouring up the gangways, and the decks were rapidly becoming crowded with a many-colored, ever-shifting galaxy of humanity. ”

“ You girls are as crazy as Walker of Nicaragua. Do you imagine that a retired Captain of the United States Navy is going to take command of a pirate craft of far less legal standing than the ‘Alabama,’ for then we were at war, but now we are at peace. Do you actually propose to attack the domain of a friendly country! Oh!” cried the Captain, with a mighty explosion of breath, for at this point his supply of language entirely gave out.
“No one would know anything about it,” persisted Katherine.
“Not know about it? With a crew of men picked up here in New York, and coming back to New York? ”

“ Katherine closed her eyes, rocked gently back and forth, and crooned, almost inaudibly:
“‘When you gang awa, Jimmie, Faur across the sea, laddie, When ye gang to Russian lands What will ye send to me, laddie?’
I know what I shall get. It will probably be a newly discovered recipe for the compounding of cement which will do away with the necessity of steel strengthening.”
“Kate, dear, you are overdoing it. It is quite right that woman should be a mystery to man, but she should not aspire to become a mystery to her sister woman. ”

“ The bed was of iron and fastened to the floor. On the top of it was a mattress, a pillow, and a pair of blankets. At its head a little triangular shelf of rock had been left in the corner, and on this reposed a basin of tin, while a coarse piece of sacking took the place of a towel. Jack threw off his overcoat and flung it on the bed, intent on a satisfactory wash. He heard something jingle in the pockets, and forgetting for the moment what it could possibly be, thrust his hand in, and pulled out a glass-stoppered bottle of ozak. ”

“ Dorothy rose quietly, and put her hands on the shoulders of the girl, feeling her frame tremble underneath her touch.
“Katherine,” she said, quietly, but Katherine, with a nervous twitch of her shoulders flung off the friendly grasp.
“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Go back to your letter-writing. You and the Englishman are exactly alike; unfeeling, heartless. He with his selfish stubbornness has involved an innocent man in the calamity his own stupidity has brought about.” ”

“ Who is the man?”
“The human soul,” continued Katherine seriously, “aspires to higher things than the society columns of the New York Sunday papers, and the frivolous chatter of an overheated ball-room.”
“Again you score, Kate, and are rising higher and higher in my estimation. I see it all now. Those solemn utterances of yours point directly toward Hugh Miller’s ‘Old Red Sandstone’ and works of that sort, and now I remember your singing ‘When Johnny comes marching home.’ I therefore take it that Jack Lamont has arrived.” ”

“ The gaoler made no reply, but he and the man with the lantern retired, drawing the door heavily after them. Lermontoff heard the bolts thrust into place, and the turn of the key; then silence fell, all but the babbling of the water. He stood still in the center of the cell, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his overcoat, and, in spite of this heavy garment, he shivered a little.
“Jack, my boy,” he muttered, “this is a new deal, as they say in the West. I can imagine a man going crazy here, if it wasn’t for that stream. I never knew what darkness meant before. ”

“ I wish you to buy the yacht ‘Walrus’ just as she stands, and make the best bargain you can for me. A man is so much better at this kind of negotiation than a woman.”
“But surely, my dear Dorothy, you won’t persist in buying this yacht?”
“It’s her own money, father,” put in Katherine.
“Keep quiet,” said the Captain, rising, for the first time speaking with real severity, whereupon Katherine, in spite of the fact that she was older than twenty-one, was wise enough to obey. ”

“ The girl for some reason has gone out. She hasn’t had a bite to eat since breakfast time, and I know there’s not a silver piece in her pocket to buy a bun in a milk-shop.”
“She has no business to be absent without leave,” said Sabina.
“How you talk! As if she were a sailor on a battleship—I mean a cruiser.”
“Where can the girl have gone?” wailed the mother, almost wringing her hands, partially overcome by the crisis. “Did she say anything about going out to you, Katherine? She sometimes makes a confidant of you, doesn’t she?” ”

“ It seems ridiculous that one should have been all along the American coast from Canada to New York, and never have got far enough inland to view the great Falls.
“Russia is rather dilatory in her methods, but I surely should know within two or three weeks whether I am going to succeed or not. If not, then there is no use in waiting there. I shall try to persuade the Prince to accompany me to America. During the weeks I am waiting in St. Petersburg I shall continually impress upon him the utter futility of a life which has not investigated the great electrical power plant at Niagara Falls. ”

“ I suppose that rock in the Baltic is a concealed fort, with galleries and gun-rooms cut in the stone after the fashion of our defences at Gibraltar. I told the court-martial that I had added a valuable bit of information to our naval knowledge, but I don’t suppose this contention exercised any influence on the minds of my judges. I also called their attention to the fact that my shell had hit, while the Russian shot fell half a mile short. That remark nearly cost me my commission. A court-martial has no sense of humor. ”

“ Calmly! Yes, that is the word. It is easy for you to be calm when you don’t care. But I care, and I cannot be calm.”
“What do you wish to do, Katherine?”
“What can I do? I am a pauper and a dependent, but one thing I am determined to do, and that is to go and live in my father’s house.”
“If you were in my place, what would you do Katherine?”
“I would go to Russia.”
“What would you do when you arrived there?”
“If I had wealth I would use it in such a campaign of bribery and corruption in that country of tyrants that I should release two innocent men. ”

“ I don’t really wish to talk to any one, but simply to enjoy my dream, with just a little fear at the bottom of my heart that I shall suddenly wake up, rubbing my eyes, in the sewing room.”
Katherine pinched her.
“Now are you awake?”
Dorothy smiled, still dreaming.
“Hello!” cried Katherine, with renewed animation, “they’ve got the Secretary safe aboard the lugger, and they seem to be clearing the decks for action. Here is my dear Lieutenant returning; tall even among tall men. Look at him. He’s in a great hurry, yet so polite, and doesn’t want to bump against anybody. ”

“ THE habit of industry practised from childhood to maturity is not obliterated by an unexpected shower of gold. Dorothy was an early riser, and one morning, entering the parlor from her room she saw, lying upon the table, a letter with a Russian stamp, but addressed in an unknown hand to her friend Katherine Kempt. ”

“ Will you excuse me a moment while I fetch his Highness?”
Dorothy inclined her head, and Katherine fairly beamed permission.
“Oh, Dorothy,” she exclaimed, when the Lieutenant was out of hearing, “think of it! A real prince, and my ambition has never risen higher than a paltry count, or some plebeian of that sort. He’s mine, Dorothy; I found him first.”
“I thought you had appropriated the Lieutenant?”
“What are lieutenants to me? The proud daughter of a captain (retired) cannot stoop to a mere lieutenant.”
“You wouldn’t have to stoop far, Kate, with so tall a man as Mr. Drummond.” ”

“ Captain Kempt and his wife went first, followed by Sabina and her young man with the two girls in their wake.
“Aren’t those men splendid?” whispered Katherine to her friend. “I wish each held an old-fashioned torch. I do love a sailor.”
“So do I,” said Dorothy, then checked herself, and laughed a little.
“I guess we all do,” sighed Katherine.
On deck the bluff captain of the “Consternation,” in resplendent uniform, stood beside Lady Angela Burford of the British Embassy at Washington, to receive the guests of the cruiser. ”

“ He treats the most serious problem of a woman’s life as if it were the latest thing in ‘Life.’”
Dorothy sat up in the hammock.
“The most important problem? That means a proposal. Goodness gracious, Kate, is that insurance man back here again?”
“What insurance man?”
“Oh, heartless and heart-breaking Katherine, is there another? ”

“ Jack laughed good-naturedly.
“All’s fair in love and war,” he said. “Imprisonment is a section of war. I must admit that electricity has been a powerful aid to us. But you cannot blame yourself, Governor, for you always took every precaution, and the gaoler was eternally at my heels. You can never pretend that you trusted me, you know.” ”

“ It being somewhat unusual for a keen business man to take a four hours’ journey during an afternoon in the middle of the week, and, as a consequence, arrive late at his office next morning, Dorothy began to wonder if a concrete formation, associated with the name of Prince Ivan Lermontoff of Russia, was strong enough to stand an energetic assault of this nature, supposing it were to be constantly repeated. ”

“ CAPTAIN and Mrs. Kempt with Sabina had resided a week in the Matterhorn Hotel before the two girls arrived there. They had gone direct to New York, and it required the seven days to find a flat that suited them, of which they were to take possession on the first of October. Then there were the lawyers to see; a great many business details to settle, and an architect to consult. After leaving New York the girls spent a day at Haverstock, where Dorothy Amhurst bought a piece of land as shrewdly as if she had been in the real estate business all her life. ”

“ He handed her the letter.
“My dearest Dorothy,” she read, in writing well known to her. “You may judge my exalted state of mind when you see that I dare venture on such a beginning. I have been worrying myself and other people all to no purpose. I have received a letter from Jack this morning, and so suspicious had I grown that for a few moments I suspected the writing was but an imitation of his. He is a very impulsive fellow, and can think of only one thing at a time, which accounts for his success in the line of invention. ”

“ Wherever a spring exists, it comes from a source higher than itself.”
“There are lots of springs up in the mountains,” interrupted Katherine. “I know one on Mount Washington that is ten times as high as the rock in the Baltic.”
“Quite so, Katherine, quite so, but nevertheless there is a lake, subterraneous or above ground, which feeds your White Mountain spring, and such a lake must be situated higher than the spring is. Why, girl, you ought to study hydrometeorology as well as chemistry. ”

“ He dresses like a workman; his grimy blouse would delight the heart of his friend Tolstoi, but he is known to be a Prince, and I think the authorities imagine he is playing up to the laboring class, whom they despise. I lay it all to that unfortunate explosion, which gathered the police about us as if they had sprung from the ground. There was an official examination, of course, and Jack explained, apparently to everybody’s satisfaction, exactly how he came to make the mistake that resulted in the loss of his beard and his windows. ”

“ Dorothy seated herself, and Katherine followed her example, Steele’s “Fourteen-Weeks’ Course” resting in her lap.
“Every man,” began Katherine, “should have a guardian to protect him.”
“From women?”
“From all things that are deceptive, and not what they seem.”
“That sounds very sententious, Kate. What does it mean?”
“It means that man is a simpleton, easily taken in. He is too honest for crafty women, who delude him shamelessly.” ”

“ He reached for and drew the sword-bayonet that hung at his side (for his second pistol had become lost in the scrimmage) , and thrust blindly about him. Once, twice his blade met resistance and struck into flesh.
“Jack,” panted Alan, “the beast’s stabbing. Get yourself loose and find the electric light.”
As he spoke, Alan’s hand found the gaoler’s throat. He knew it was not Alan’s from the rough beard that covered it. The gaoler, maddened by the pressure, stabbed with fresh fury; most of his blows, fortunately, going wild in the darkness. ”