The Lightning Conductor Discovers America. C. N. Williamson
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up in red or black silk handkerchiefs, very ancient and faded; and if you will believe me, my dear girl, the effect is most distinguished!
I told you that he looks as an Italian prince ought to look and seldom does; but he claims American citizenship. He sailed from New York in the Lusitania, and was among those saved. Far from advertising this adventure, the hero of it would apparently have kept silence if he could; but it leaked out somehow in Ireland, Whiffits doesn't quite know how. In any case, at the time of taking passage on the Arabic back to America, months later, paragraphs about the man's Lusitania experience appeared in the papers. He was catechized at the consulate when trying to get a passport for the United States, and it came out then that there was no Peter Storm on board the Lusitania. Our Mystery explained, however, that in the third class there was a passenger registered as "Peter Sturm." The name, according to him, was spelled wrongly at the time. Nobody has since contradicted this statement, so it has been given the benefit of the doubt. Once more the man's luck bobbed up on board the Arabic, where he was saved again, and behaved well, rescuing a lot of people. What he did in that way on the Lusitania isn't known; but the searchlight of fame was turned full upon him after the Arabic, and has never ceased to play around his head. By the by, the said head was wounded in the Arabic affair, and bears a scar which runs down over the left temple and is rather becoming. Also he got pneumonia from exposure, and lay dangerously ill for some time. Several persons whose lives he saved wanted to give him money, but he refused to accept. He was nursed at a hospital in Ireland, and when he grew strong enough he found work, in order to pay his own way to America. What he is going to turn his hand to over there he doesn't seem to know, or won't tell.
We have a real live millionairess on the Evangeline an American millionairess from the West somewhere, a Mrs. Shuster. She's a widow, about forty-five, common but kind. For "two twos" I believe she would adopt the Stormy Petrel. She's been in Switzerland, where people used to go to eat chocolate and see mountains, and where they now go to make proposals of peace. I believe she made some, but nobody listened much, so she came away disappointed and fiercely determined to do good somewhere or know the reason why! She's a stout, wildly untidy woman whose mouse-coloured hair is always coming down, though it's freely dotted with irrelevant tortoise-shell combs; and whose elaborate clothes look somehow insecure, the way scree does on the side of a mountain. Her ideas leap out of her brain like rabbits out of holes, and then go scuttling away again, to be followed ineffectively by others: and her latest is benefiting the Ship's Mystery. She's sure he can't be American, because Americans don't have eyes like wells of ink, and short, close black beards like those of English or Italian naval officers. Her theory is that he's a subject of some belligerent country, who has conscientious scruples against fighting. The fact that he sailed from New York on the Lusitania last spring can't convince the lady that she is wrong in her "deductions," as Sherlock Holmes would say. It only complicates the mystery a little and adds ramifications.
To my mind, Mr. Storm hasn't at all the look of a man opposed to fighting. I believe he would love it. The odd thing to me is, where there's such wide opportunity on one side or the other, that he isn't doing it. And Jack thinks so, too. I do hope he isn't a spy or an anarchist, or a person who takes passage on ships to blow them up or signal to submarines or something.
Of course I haven't suggested such horrors to Mrs. Shuster; and yesterday she made up an exploring party for the steerage, so as to open communications with the desired protégé. The first officer had promised to take her, and she asked me to join them. I happened to be talking to Patsey Moore at the time, and saw by the way her eyes lighted that she was dying to go, too. So I got her included in the invitation.
It was a lovely calm day, the long level lines of the sea punctuated with porpoises, dear things like giant commas. A good many of the third-class passengers were writing letters on their knees, and the quaintest paper. Among these was the Man of Mystery; and Mrs. Shuster sailed up to him, billowing out in the breeze of her own enthusiasm.
"We've all heard of you," she said. "And the splendid things you did on the Arabic."
Actually the man blushed! He rose up politely; and as he is very tall and straight, rather thin, and extremely dark, he reminded me of a cedar towering beside one of those squat Dutch trees cut into the shape of some domestic animal.
"I really did nothing," he protested, with that guilty redness spreading over his olive face, and making him more mysterious than ever. Because he had the air of being found out in something. And the blush began before Mrs. Shuster got as far as mentioning the Arabic. It was more as if he were afraid she had met him before and recognized him.
"Well, other people are better judges of that than yourself," the dear lady contradicted him. "I, and a lot more first-class passengers, feel it's a shame you should be here. We want you to be up with us and—and telling us all about your adventures. The favour wouldn't be from us to you, but the other way round, if you accepted the price of a cabin. We're sure you're a gentleman——"
At that it was Patsey's and my turn to blush! It was such an awful thing to say to the man, though the poor woman meant so blunderingly well. P. and I were in the background—an easy place to be, because there's so much of Mrs. Shuster. We weren't even a chorus, because we hadn't made a sound or a gesture, and didn't intend to make one. But the colour effect was unrehearsed and unavoidable. I felt a regular blush of red to the head, as I used to say when I was small, and Pat grew scarlet as if she'd been suddenly slapped. I expected to see the forked lightning of scorn dart from those immense dark eyes of Storm's: but instead they crinkled up in an engaging smile. One glance the man gave Pat and me, against his own will I think: but it was a spontaneous combustion of his sense of humour. It struck a spark to ours, and I dared to smile also. Pat didn't quite dare, but looked relieved, though still evidently scared about what might come next, and intensely, painfully interested.
"Thank you very much," said Mr. Storm. "I'm afraid you flatter me, madam. I make no such pretension. It's kind of you to think of promoting me, but this is my place. I shouldn't feel at home going first class, I assure you. I haven't either the manners or the clothes to make me comfortable there."
"Why, I think your manners are beautiful," that miserable millionairess assured him, while my mouth felt dry, and I'm sure Patsey's became arid as the Libyan Desert.
"We'll all risk that, if you'll come and entertain us with stories of your adventures. As for clothes, I can take up a collection for you from among the gentlemen of the first class. A shirt here, a coat there. They'd be delighted."
"Thank you again," responded the victim, still smiling. "But I should be—a misfit. And I haven't a story worth telling. I'm no Scherezadé. I'm very grateful for your interest, madam, but my best way of showing it is to stay where I am—and where I belong."
"You're ever so much too modest," the unfortunate lady persisted. "Isn't he, Mrs. Winston?"
I prickled all over like a cactus. "I think Mr. Petrel—I mean Mr. Storm—can decide for himself better than we can," I stammered.
He looked at me, and then beyond me at Pat. "I'm really grateful," he repeated.
Even Mrs. Shuster understood that the rare plant preferred to remain in the kitchen garden with the vegetables, and that she could not uproot it.
"Well," she said reluctantly, "I'm sorry you feel that way. But do let me do something to—to show my appreciation of your gallant conduct on the Arabic. You're evidently a man of education. I see that, in spite of all you say. It isn't true, is it, that you're an American?"
"Quite true, madam," he answered coolly. "Do I speak like a foreigner?"
"Not like a foreigner, exactly. But—well, I don't know. I must take your word for it. I guess, though, you've spent a good deal of time in other countries?"
"I've been here and there," he admitted. "I had the craze for travel in my blood as a boy." As he spoke, he smiled again, as if at some odd memory.
"I dare say you know several languages?" suggested Mrs. Shuster.
"Oh, I've