For a while, she sat stunned, her brow drawn; then, she said to the terrier in a voice as nearly plaintive as she ever allowed it to be:
“I don’t like it. I don’t want him ever to go away—and yet—” she tossed her head upward—“yet, I guess I shouldn’t have much use for him if he didn’t do just such things.”
The terrier evidently approved the sentiment, for he cocked his head gravely to the side, and slowly wagged his stumpy tail.
But the girl did not remain long in idleness. For a time, her forehead was delicately corrugated under the stress of rapid thinking as she sat, her fingers clasped about her updrawn knees, then she rose and hurried to Horton House. There were things to be done and done at once, and it was her fashion, once reaching resolution, to act quickly.
It was necessary to take Mrs. Horton into her full confidence, because it was necessary that Mrs. Horton should be ready to go with her, as fast as trains and steamers could carry them, to a town called Puerto Frio in South America, and South America was quite a long way off. Mrs. Horton had known for weeks that something more was transpiring than showed on the surface. She had even inferred that there was “an understanding” between her niece and the painter, and this inference she had not found displeasing. The story that Duska told did astonish her, but under her composure of manner Mrs. Horton had the ability to act with prompt decision. Mr. Horton knew only part, but was complacent, and saw no reason why a trip planned for a later date should not be “advanced on the docket,” and it was so ordered.
Steele, of course, already knew most of the story, and it was he who kept the telephone busy between the house and the city ticket-offices. While the ladies packed, he was acquiring vast information as to schedules and connections. He learned that they could catch an outgoing steamer from New Orleans, which would probably put them at their destination only a day or two behind Saxon. Incidentally, in making these arrangements, Steele reserved accommodations for himself as well as Mrs. Horton and her niece.
With the American coast left behind, Saxon’s journey through the Caribbean, even with the palliation of the trade-winds, was insufferably hot. The slenderly filled passenger-list gave the slight alleviation of an uncrowded ship. Those few travelers whose misfortunes doomed them to such a cruise at such a time, lay listlessly under the awnings, and watched the face of the water grow bluer, bluer, bluer to the hot indigo of the twentieth parallel, where nothing seemed cool enough for energy or motion except the flying fish and the pursuing gull.
There were several days of this to be endured, and the painter, thinking of matters further north and further south, found no delight in its beauty. He would stand, deep in thought, at the bow when day died and night was born without benefit of twilight, watching the disk of the sun plunge into the sea like a diver. It seemed that Nature herself was here sudden and passionate in matters of life and death. He saw the stars come out, low-hanging and large, and the water blaze with phosphorescence wherever a wave broke, brilliantly luminous where the propeller churned the wake. It was to him an ominous beauty, fraught with crowding portents of ill omen.
The entering and leaving of ports became monotonous. Each was a steaming village of hot adobe walls, corrugated-iron custom houses and sweltering, ragged palms. At last, at a town no more or less appealing than the others, just as the ear-splitting whistle screeched its last warning of departure, a belated passenger came over the side from a frantically-driven row-boat. The painter was looking listlessly out at the green coast line, and did not notice the new arrival.
The newcomer followed his luggage up the gangway to the deck, his forehead streaming perspiration, his none-too-fresh gray flannels splashed with salt water. At the top, he shook the hand of the second officer, with the manner of an old acquaintance.