LAND HO!
Land Ho!A fool for luck went a-fishing in the Atlantic with his heart for bait--and caught the Goddess of the Realm of Dreams.
I have sailed out of the Port of Chance, across the Ocean of Golden hopes, straight into the Haven of All-Joy--
And so, Journey's End in the good old way-- ~ Smith's Log
Blue-gray out of pearl-gray mist rose the shores of old England. Longbefore the sun, the Tyro was up and on deck, looking with all his eyes,a little awed, a little thrilled, as every man of the true Americanblood who honors his country must be at first sight of the Motherland.Slowly, through an increasing glow that lighted land and water alike,the leviathan of the deep made her ponderous progress to thehill-encircled harbor. A step that halted at the Tyro's elbow detachedhis attention.
"What do you think of it?" asked Lord Guenn.
The eyes of Alexander Forsyth Smith rested for a moment on a toylighthouse and passed to the trim shore, where a plaything locomotivewas pulling a train of midget box-cars with the minimum of noise andeffort.
"It's like Fairyland," he said, in a voice unconsciously modulated tothe peace of the scene. "So tiny and neatly beautiful."
"Yes; it hasn't the overwhelming magnificence of New York Harbor. Butit's England."
"And you're gladder to get back to it than you'd confess, for shame ofsentimentalizing," said the other shrewdly, having marked the note ofdeep content in that "it's England."
"One doesn't climb the rail and sing 'Rule, Britannia.'"
"It's a matter of temperament and training. Inside, I suppose, everydecent man feels the same about his own country, allowing for racialdifferences. I don't suppose, though, you'd have quite the samesensation if you were an American returning home after a long absence."
"Good Lord, no!" was the unguarded reply.
The Tyro laughed outright. "For once I've pierced the disguise of yourextremely courteous cosmopolitanism, and behold! there's John Bullunderneath, rampantly sure that nobody can be a really justified patriotexcept an Englishman."
"Confound you and your traps!" retorted the young peer, ruefully. "Ah, Isay, Cecily!" he cried as Little Miss Grouch appeared, looking, in herlong soft traveling-coat, rather lovelier (so the Tyro considered withinhimself) than any human being has any right to look.
She came over to the rail, giving the Tyro the briefest flutter of aglance to accompany her "Good-morning, Mr. Smith."
"I appeal to you," continued Lord Guenn. "You're a cosmopolitan--"
"Indeed, I'm not! I'm an American," said the young lady with vigor.
"Heaven preserve us! You Yankees are all alike. You may be as mild anddeprecatory as you please at home; one sniff of foreign air, and upgoes the Stars and Stripes. Very well, I withdraw the appeal. To changethe subject, when are you coming to us? Laura will be on the tender andshe'll want to know."
"Dad will also be on the tender," observed Little Miss Grouch, "andhe'll want to know, oh, heaps of things!"
"True enough! We'll keep out of the way of your affecting reunion. LadyGuenn's got a stateroom, Smith, in case it might rain. Come around andmeet her. Unless I'm mistaken, the tender's putting out now."
"Oh!" cried Little Miss Grouch. "That adorable kiddie! I nearly forgothim. Don't forget, please," she added to the Tyro, "you promised to lookafter them and see that they got on the right train."
"Steerage passengers come in later," said Lord Guenn. "Hullo! There'syour pater, on the upper deck of the tender. Doesn't look particularlystern and unforgiving, does he? Perhaps you'll get off with your life,after all."
Little Miss Grouch turned rather white, and shot an appealing look atthe Tyro, correctly interpreting which, he wandered away.
When he next saw her, she was in the arms of a square-faced grizzledman, and manifestly quite content to be there. The tender was swayingalongside in a strong tide-rip and the Tyro himself was making thepassage between the two craft carefully but jerkily, in the wake ofAlderson and Enderby. Once on the small boat he separated himself fromhis companions, found a secluded spot at the rail, well aft, andtactfully turned his back upon the Grouch group.
Evolutionists assert that we all possess some characteristic, howevervague, of all the forms into which the life-stock has differentiated.Upon this theory the Tyro must have had in his make-up adisproportionate share of the common house-fly, which, we are taught,rejoices in eyes all around its head. For, though he sedulously avertedhis face from the pair in whom his interest centered, he was perfectlyaware of what they were doing.
First Little Miss Grouch glanced at him and said something. Then herfather glared at him and said something. Then she turned toward himagain and made another remark. Then the disgruntled parent gloweredmore fiercely and said a worse thing than he had said before. Then bothof them regarded him until his ears flushed and swelled to theirfarthest tips.
All of which was a triumph of the visual imagination. As a matter offact they weren't talking about him at all. Little Miss Grouch wasafraid to. And her stern parent didn't even know who he was. The subjectof their conversation was, largely, the Battery Place house.
Still continuing to imagine a vain thing, the Tyro felt the gentlestlittle pressure on his arm.
"Such a deep-brown, brown study!" said Little Miss Grouch's gay littlevoice, at his elbow.
The Tyro turned with a sigh, quickly succeeded by a smile. It was veryhard not to smile, just for pure joy of the eye, when Little Miss Grouchwas in the foreground.
"Why the musing melancholy?" she pursued.
"I'm coming out of Fairyland into the Realm of Realities," heexplained. "And I don't believe in realities any more."
"I'm a reality," she averred.
"No." He shook his head. "You're a figment. I made you up, myself, in aburst of creative genius."
"Just like that? Right out of your head?"
"Out of my heart," he corrected.
"Then why not have moulded me nearer to the heart's desire?" she queriedcunningly. "Do you still think I'm homely?"
He shut his eyes firmly. "I do."
"And cross?"
"A regular virago."
"And ugly, and messy and an idiot--"
"Hold on! You're double-crossing the indictment. I'm the offendedidiot," declared the Tyro, opening his eyes upon her.
She took advantage of his indiscretion.
"Am I red-nosed?"
"You are. At least, you will be when you cry again."
"I'll cry straight off this minute, if you don't promise to take it allback."
"I'll promise--the instant we touch shore."
There was a gravity in his tone that banished her mischief.
"Perhaps I don't really want you to take it back," she said wistfully.
"Ah, but with firm earth under our feet once more, and realities allaround us--"
"There's Guenn Oaks. That's on the very borders of Elfland. Don't youthink Bertie looks like a Pixie?"
"I'm not going to Guenn Oaks."
"Not if I say my very prettiest 'please'?"
From those pleading lips and eyes the Tyro turned away. Instantly therewas a piercing squeak of greeting from across the narrow strip of water.
"It's the Beatific Baby!" cried Little Miss Grouch. "How did he ever getthere? Oh! Oh!! Get him, some one!"
Near an opening at the rail of the ship some of the third-class luggagehad been left. Upon this the Pride of the Steerage had clambered and wasthere perilously balancing, while he waved his hands at his departingfriends. There was a deeper-toned answering cry to Little Miss Grouch'sappeal, as the mother, leaping to the rail, ran swiftly along it,seized and hurled her child back, and, with the effort, plungedoverboard herself.
By the time she had touched the water, the Tyro's overcoat and coat wereon the deck and his hands on the rail.
"Take that life-preserver," he said, with swift quietness to Little MissGrouch. "As soon as you see me get her, throw it as far beyond us as youcan. You understand? Beyond. There she is. Damn!!"
For Little Miss Grouch's arms had closed desperately around hisshoulders. With his wrestler's knowledge, he could have broken that holdin a second's fraction, but that would have been to fling her againstthe rail, possibly over it. He twisted until his face almost touchedhers.
"Let me go!"
In all her pampered life Miss Cecily Wayne had never before beenaddressed in that tone or anything remotely resembling it, by man,woman, or child. Her grip relaxed. She shrank back, appalled.
For perhaps a second she had checked him, and in that second the huddleof blue had drifted almost abreast. It was an easy leap from where theTyro stood. One foot was on the rail, when he staggered aside from animpact very different from the feminine assault. Mr. Henry Clay Waynehad turned from an absorbing conversation with Mrs. Denyse in time tosee his daughter in hand-to-hand combat with a man. Observing the mannow about to precipitate himself into the sea, he formulated the theoryof an attempted robbery and escape, and acted with the promptitude whichhad made him famous in Wall Street. As he was a decidedly husky onehundred-and-seventy-pounds' worth, his arrival notably interfered withthe Tyro's projects.
Now the Tyro's naturally equable temper had been disturbed by the otherencounter, and this one loosed its bonds. Here was no softeningconsideration of sex. Who the interferer was, the Tyro knew not, norcared. He drove an elbow straight into the midsection of the enemy,lashed out with a heel which landed square on the most sensitive portionof the shin, broke the relaxed hold with one effort, and charged like abull through the crowd now lining the rail at the stern curve,--andstopped dead, as a general shout, part cheers, part laughter, arose. Thewoman was ploughing through the water with great overhand strokes. In afew seconds she stood on the tender's deck, while the crowdcongratulated and questioned.
"I'm a feesh," she explained, pointing to a crudely embroidered dolphinon her sleeve, which, as Dr. Alderson explained, meant that she hadundergone the famous swimming test in her own German town of Dessau onthe Mulde.
Meantime two dukes, a ship's pilot, a negro pugilist, a goddess of grandopera, a noted aviator, and some scores of lesser people looked on inamazement at the third richest man in America hopping on one foot likean inebriated and agonized crane, with his other shin clasped in hishands, and making faces which an amateur photographer hastened to snap,subsequently suppressing them for reasons of humanity and art.
Several people, including Mrs. Charlton Denyse with two red spots on hercheeks besides what she had put there herself, endeavored to explain tothe Tyro just what species of high treason he had committed by hisassault, but he was in no mood for gratuitous information, and removedhimself determinedly from their vicinity. Presently Judge Enderbyappeared upon his horizon.
"His leg isn't broken," he announced.
"Whose leg?"
"That of the gentleman you so brutally assaulted. He wants to see you."
"Tell him to go to the devil."
"Oh, I wouldn't do that," soothed the legal veteran, his face twinkling.
"All right. Bring him here and I'll tell him."
"Even though he is Little Miss Grouch's father?"
"What!"
"Precisely. Now, will you go to him?"
"No."
"When you employ one of the highest-priced counsel in America," observedthe old man plaintively, "while it isn't essential that you shouldreceive his advice with any degree of courtesy--"
"I really beg your pardon, Judge Enderby. The fact is, my temper hasbeen a little ruffled--"
"Calm it down until you need it again and come with me." The judgetucked an arm under the Tyro's, who presently found himself beingstudied by a handsomely grim face, somewhat humanized by an occasionaltwinge of pain. The owner of the face acknowledged Judge Enderby'sintroduction and waited. The Tyro likewise acknowledged Judge Enderby'sintroduction and waited. Mr. Wayne was waiting for the Tyro toapologize. The Tyro hadn't the faintest notion of apologizing, and, hadhe known that it was expected, would have been more exasperated thanbefore, since he considered himself the aggrieved party. Finding silenceunproductive, the magnate presently broke it.
"You were going in after that woman?"
"Yes."
"Did you know her?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"On shipboard."
"Oh! She was the one you and my daughter used to pamper, in thesteerage. Mrs. Denyse told me. So you thought you'd be a Young Hero,eh?"
The Tyro caught Judge Enderby's eye, and, reading therein an admonition,preserved his temper and his silence.
"Well, I rather spoiled your little game. And you pretty near ruined mydigestion with your infernal elbow."
The Tyro smiled an amiable smile.
"Did you know who I was when you kicked me?"
"No," answered the Tyro in such a tone that the elder man grinned.
"Nor care either, eh?"
"No. I'd have punched you in the eye if I'd had time."
"Don't apologize. You did your best. Now that you do know who I am--"
"I don't. Except that you're the father of Little Miss Grouch."
"Of who--um!" demanded the other, rescuing his grammar from his surprisebarely in time to save its fair repute.
The Tyro had the grace to blush. "It's just a foolish nickname," hesaid.
"Particularly inappropriate, I should say. By the way, your own nameseems to be a matter of some doubt. What do you call yourself?"
"Smith."
"By what right?"
"Birthright. If it comes to rights, where is your license to practicecross-examination?"
"Mrs. Charlton Denyse says that your real name is Daddleskink."
"Well, it won't seriously handicap her popularity with me to have herthink so."
"Mrs. Charlton Denyse says that your attentions to my daughter have beenso marked as to compromise her."
"Mrs. Charlton Denyse is a--well, she's a woman."
"Otherwise you'd punch her in the eye?"
"I'd scratch all the new paint off her," said the Tyro virulently.
"My clerk had an awful time with that name of yours. He thought it wascode. What's your occupation, Mr. Smith?"
"Answering questions. Have you got many more to ask?"
"I have. Are you a haberdasher?"
"Don't answer," advised Judge Enderby, in his profoundest tones, "if ittends to incriminate or degrade you."
"Hullo!" cried Mr. Wayne. "Where do you come in?"
"I am Mr. Smith's counsel."
"The devil you are!"
"Therefore my presence is strictly professional."
Now, Mr. Henry Clay Wayne was a tolerably shrewd judge of humankind. Tobe sure, the Tyro was of a species new to him. Hence he had gonecautiously, testing him for temper and poise. At this point hedetermined upon what he would have described as "rough-neck work."
"How much will he take, Enderby?"
"For what?"
"To quit."
With admirable agility for one of his age, Judge Enderby jumped in frontof the Tyro. He had seen, underneath the rebellious side-curl whichcame down across the youth's temple, a small vein swell suddenly andpurply.
"Wayne," said he over his shoulder, "you'd better apologize."
"What for?"
"To save your life. I think my client is about to drop you over therail, and I can't conscientiously advise him not to."
"No, I'm not," said the Tyro, with an effort. "But I want to hear thatagain."
"What?" inquired Mr. Wayne.
"That--that offer of a bribe."
"No bribe at all. A straightforward business proposition."
"So that's your notion of business," said the Tyro slowly.
"Well, why not?" Bland innocence overspread the magnate's features as ifin a layer. "I ask you to name your price for quitting your pretendedclaim--"
"I don't pretend any claim!"
"--to a house, which--"
"A house?"
"Certainly. On Battery Place."
"That isn't what you meant," bluntly accused the lawyer.
"Of course it isn't." There was an abrupt and complete change of voiceand expression. "My boy, I suppose you think you're in love with mydaughter."
The Tyro found this man suddenly a very likable person.
"Think!" he exclaimed.
"Well, if you think so hard enough, you are. And I suppose you want tomarry her?"
"I'd give the heart out of my body for her."
"Do you know anything about the kind of girl she is? The life she leads?The things and people that make life for her? The sort of world shelives in?"
"Not very much."
"I suppose not. Well, son, I make up my mind quickly about people. Youstrike me as something of a man. But I'm afraid you haven't got thebacking to carry out this contract."
"We are prepared to show a reasonable income," declared Judge Enderby,"with a juster prospect of permanence than--well, for example, than WallStreet affords, at present."
"Possibly. Of course I could find our young friend here an ornamentaland useless position in my office--"
"No, thank you," said the Tyro.
"No. I'd supposed not. Well, Mr. Smith, to keep that amiable young ladyrunning at the rate of speed which she considers legal, trims fiftythousand a year down so fine that I could put the remainder in the plateon New Year's Sunday without a pang."
"Fifty thousand!" gasped the Tyro.
"Oh, the modern American girl is a high-priced luxury. Are you worth amillion dollars?"
"No."
"See any prospect of getting a million?"
"Not the slightest."
"Well, do you think it would be fair to a girl like Cecily, with anupbringing which--"
"Which imbecility and snobbery have combined to make the worstimaginable," cut in Judge Enderby.
"I don't say you're wrong. But it's what she's had. That kind of life isno longer a luxury to her. It's a necessity."
"Twaddle!" observed the judge.
"Have it your own way," allowed the father patiently. "But there's thesituation," he added to the Tyro. "What are you going to do with it?"
The Tyro looked him between the eyes. "The best I can," said he, andwalked away.
"Now, Enderby," said the great financier, following him with his glance,"it's up to the boy and the girl."
"You've killed him off."
"Not if I know Cecily. She's got a good deal of her mother in her. I'vealways known it would be once and forever with her. And I'm afraid thisboy is the once."
"It might be worse," suggested the lawyer dryly.
"Yes. I've made inquiries. But what can a man know about things?" Thegreat man's regard drifted out into the gray distance of the open sea."Ah, if I had her mother back again!"
"The boy is fine and honorable and manful, Wayne," said the old lawyer."To be sure, you'll never make a Wall Street dollar-hound out of him--"
"Heaven knows I don't want to."
"But he'll play his part in the world and play it well. I've come tothink a good deal of that boy. I wish I were as sure of the girl."
"Cecily? Don't you worry about her." The father chuckled pridefully."She's got stuff in her. I'd trust her to start the world with as I didwith her mother."
What of Little Miss Grouch, while all these momentous happenings were inprogress? Events had piled up on her sturdy little nerves rather toofast even for their youthful strength. The emotional turmoil of whichthe Tyro was the cause, the tension of meeting her father again, and, ontop of these, the startling occurrences on the deck of the tender hadstretched her endurance a little beyond its limit, and it was with asense of grateful refuge that she had betaken herself to the hospitalityof Lady Guenn's cabin. What transpired between the two women is nomatter for the pen of a masculine chronicler. Suffice it to note thatLord Guenn, surcharged with instructions to be casual, set out to findthe Tyro, and, having found him, blurted out:--
"I say, Smith, Cecily's in our cabin. If I were you I'd lose no timegetting there. It's the only one on the port side aft."
No time was lost by the Tyro. He found Cecily alone. At sight of herface, his heart gave one painful thump, and shriveled up.
"You've been crying," he said.
"I haven't!" she denied. "And if I have, there's enough to make me cry."
"What was it?" was his sufficiently lame rejoinder.
"I imagine if you'd seen your father beaten and kicked as I saw mine--"
"I didn't know who it was."
"But if you had been shaken and cursed, yourself--"
"Cursed? Who cursed you?"
"You did."
"I!"
"You said, 'D-d-damn you, let me go!'"
"I did not. I simply told you to let me go."
"Well you might as well have said 'Damn you!' You meant it," whimperedLittle Miss Grouch.
"She might have been drowned," said the Tyro.
"So might you. I saved your life by not letting you go in after her. Andyou haven't a spark of gratitude."
"Well," began the Tyro, astounded at this sudden turn of strategy, "Iam--"
"Go on and curse some more," she advised. "I suppose you'd have kickedme if I hadn't let go."
He stared at her, speechless.
"Now you've made me cu-cu-cry again. And my nose is all red. Isn't mynose all red? Say 'Yes.'"
"Yes," said the bewildered young man, obediently.
"And I'm hoarse as a crow. Am I? Say it!"
"Y-y-yes," he stammered.
"And I'm homely and frowsy, and dowdy and horrid and a perfect mess. AmI a mess? Say--"
"No!" The rebel in the Tyro broke bonds. "You're the loveliest andmost adorable and sweetest thing on this earth, and I love you."
"I--I think you might have said it before," said Little Miss Grouch in avery wee voice.
"I'd no business to say it at all. But I simply couldn't go without--"
"Go?" she cried, startled. "Where?"
"Away. It doesn't matter where."
"Away from me?"
"Yes."
She faced him with leveled eyes, tearless now, and infinitely pleading.
"You couldn't do that," she said.
"I must."
"After--after last night, on deck? And--and now--what you've just said?"
"I can't help it, dear," he said miserably. "I've been talking with yourfather."
"Is it--is it our money?"
"Yes."
"Are you a coward?" she flashed. "Afraid of what people would say?"
"Afraid of what you yourself would feel when you found yourself missingthe things you've been used to so long."
"What do I care for those things? It's just a sort of snobbery in you.Oh, I'd have married you when I thought your name was Daddleskink!" shecried, with flaming face. "And now because we're different from what youthought, you--you--"
"You're not making it very easy for me, dear," he said piteously.
There came into her face, like an inspiration, a radiance of thetenderest fun. She put her hands one on each of his shoulders, and witha little soft catch in her voice, sang:--
"Lady once loved a pig. 'Honey,' said she, 'Pig, will you marry me?'--
"You grunt!" she bade him.
He strove to turn his face away.
"Grunt," she besought. "Grunt, Pig; Perfect Pig! Grunt now or foreverhold your peace."
Then the clinging hands slipped forward, the soft arms closed about hisneck, and she was sobbing with her cheek pressed close to his cheek.
"I won't let you go. I won't! Never, never, never!"
"But I don't know what I'm to say to your father, darling," he said, asthe grinding of the tender against the wharf brought them back torealities.
"Leave him to me," she bade him. "I'm going to send for him and JudgeEnderby now."
The two appeared promptly.
"Dad," she said, "you remember what you said about the house on BatteryPlace?"
"I think I do."
"That you'd get it for me if you had to buy off the option for amillion?"
"Correct."
"And you're still Wayne of his Word?"
"Try me."
"Give your check to Mr. Smith. Our price is just a million. Then," sheadded with an entrancing blush, "you can give us the house as a weddingpresent."
"So that's the bargain, is it?" queried the financier.
"No. It isn't the bargain at all," replied the Tyro, with quietfirmness. "The option isn't for sale."
"Not at a million?"
"Certainly not at a million. It isn't worth anything like that."
"A thing's worth what you can get for it."
"For value received. Not for charity, with however glossy asugar-coating. If Miss Wayne--Cecily--"
"Little Miss Grouch," corrected the girl with the smile of aparticularly pleased angel.
"If Little Miss Grouch marries me, she will have to marry me on what I'mhonestly worth."
"I'm content," said Little Miss Grouch.
"So am I," said Mr. Wayne heartily. "You've come through, my boy." Heset a friendly hand on the Tyro's shoulder. "As for Remsen Van Dam," headded, scratching his head ruefully, "I might have known that Cecily'spick would be better than mine. Look here, children," he added briskly,"let's get this thing over and done with away from the American papers.Enderby, how do Americans get married in England?"
"Give me five dol--I mean five hundred dollars," responded the Judgepromptly.
"What for?"
"Advice."
"Done," said Mr. Wayne.
"And leave it to me. Let me see." He totaled up on his fingers. "Fiveand five is ten, and five is fifteen, and five hundred is five fifteen;a very fair profit on the voyage. It'll buy a wedding present for--"
"For the House of Smith on Battery Place," said Little Miss Grouchdemurely.
THE END.
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