Harold Bindloss - The Dust of Conflict

“I guess you will know my name, but there’s my address. Put it in your wallet,” he said.

“Mr. Cyrus P. Harding,” said Appleby. “What can I do for you?”

The man laughed pleasantly. “That is rather what I should ask you. Anyway, I want to thank you for the help you rendered my daughter.”

Appleby made a little whimsical gesture. “The conventional answer fits the case. It was nothing, sir.”

“Well,” said Harding dryly, “it would have been a good deal to me if my girl had gone out over the rail.”

“I don’t think that could have happened.”

Harding nodded, but the twinkle snowed more plainly in his eyes. “I don’t either, but I guess you were not quite sure of it then, and there are men who would have made the most of the thing. I understand you got between her and the rail, anyway, and that is what gave you the bruise on the head.”

“I’m glad I had so much sense. I have, however, had more serious bruises, and may get them again. I hope Miss Harding is none the worse.”

“No,” said Harding. “She seems quite pleased with herself. It’s an adventure, and she likes them. She will thank you to-morrow, and I don’t want to intrude on you. Still, you haven’t told me what to call you, and I hope to see more of you.”

Appleby was a young man, and the fall against the rail had shaken him, or his answer would have been more prompt and decided.

“Walthew Broughton,” he said.

Harding, he fancied, looked at him curiously, and then smiled as he went out; but there was a trifle more color than usual in Appleby’s face when he took up the card. It bore a business address in New York, but there was written across it, apparently in haste, “Sonoma, Glenwood, Hudson River.”

“I wonder if that has any special significance,” he said. “I will not force myself upon the man, but it’s quite evident I can’t afford to stand off if he means to be friendly.”

He met Miss Harding on deck next morning, and she graciously allowed him to find her a chair, pack her wraps about her, and then sit close by talking to her for half an hour, which he had cause for surmising excited the indignation of other passengers. He found her vivacious, witty, and almost astonishingly well-informed, for Nettie Harding had enjoyed all the advantages the great Republic offers its daughters, and these are many. Still, he knew that it is a mistake to overdo anything, and, though Miss Harding still appeared contented with his company, took himself away when two or three of her feminine companions appeared. They had questions to ask and Nettie Harding laughed.

“Then the Englishman can talk?” said one.

“Yes,” said Nettie Harding reflectively, “he can. Still, he’s sensible, and doesn’t say too much. I’m rather fond of those quiet men. There was another point that pleased me. He didn’t hang about where he would be sure to meet me, and then appear astonished when what he expected happened, as some men would have done, but waited until I walked up to him.”

“After all, he only picked you up off the deck. There was really no danger; and I would like to have kodaked you holding on to each other. In daylight it would have made quite an amusing picture.”

“Anyway, I must have hurt him, because he put himself between the rail and me,” said Nettie Harding. “You see, I do weigh something, though I’m a good deal lighter than you are, Miriam.”

Miriam, whose proportions were not exactly sylph-like, appeared slightly nettled, but the others laughed.

“He is quite good-looking,” said one of them. “Now, such a send-off would make a good beginning for a romance. Quite sure you don’t mean to fall in love with him, Nettie? No doubt he’s poor but distinguished, or he wouldn’t be coming out to us.”

Miss Harding smiled, but there was a trace of softness in her eyes, which were of a fine deep tint of blue. “I don’t think so, and there is a difficulty. I’m in love already – with the man I’m going to marry.”

A girl who had not spoken nodded sympathetically, for she knew the story of Nettie Harding’s engagement to an officer of the United States navy who was far from rich.

“This year – next year, Nettie?” she said.

Miss Harding smiled a little. “This one’s nearly through, and I’m going to Cuba early in the next.”

“Cuba can’t be a nice place just now, with the patriots and filibusters running loose all over it,” said the girl called Miriam. “What do you want to go there for?”

“My father’s going. He has a good many dollars planted out there, and I fancy he is getting anxious about them. I quite often go round with him; and Julian will be away in the Bering Sea.”

She rose, for a cold wind still swept the sun-flecked Atlantic; but she spoke to Appleby at lunch, and also at dinner that evening, after which her father carried him off to the smoking-room. There was a considerable difference between their ages and views of life, but a friendship that was free alike from patronage or presumption sprang up between them in spite of it. Cyrus Harding was an American, and what is usually termed a self-made man, but he did not attempt to force his belief in himself and his country upon everybody else, though it was sincere enough. He was typically lean in face and frame, but his dress was as unostentatious as his speech, and he wore no diamonds, which are, indeed, not usually displayed by men of substance in his country. The little glint in his keen blue eyes, together with the formation of his mouth and chin, however, hinted that he possessed a good deal of character.

Being a man who noticed everything, he was quite aware that Appleby spent at least an hour in the aggregate in his daughter’s company every day, and said nothing. Nettie was, he knew, a very capable young woman, and Appleby, he fancied, a gentleman, which was, in the meanwhile, sufficient for him. A friendship may also be made rapidly at sea, and on the seventh day out he asked Appleby a question. They were leaning on the rail together cigar in hand while the ship rolling her mastheads athwart the blue swung with an easy lurch over the long smooth heave of shining sea.

“What is bringing you out to our country?” he said.

Appleby laughed. “What I expect is quite the usual thing. The difficulty of getting a living in the old one.”

Harding looked him over. “Army too expensive?”

Appleby flushed a little. “I have never been in it, though I think I was meant for a soldier.”

“One can’t always be what he was meant for,” said Harding, with a little dry smile. “It’s a general belief among young men in my country that they were specially designed for millionaires, but only a few of them get there. Got any dollars?”

Appleby made a calculation. “Taking the rate at 4.80, I have about one hundred and twenty.”

He had expected his companion to show signs of astonishment at his rashness, but Harding nodded. “I began with five but I was younger than you are,” he said. “Business pays best yonder. What are you strongest at?”

“I can ride and shoot a little, which is what seems most likely to further my intentions, and speak Spanish reasonably well. These, I surmise, are very doubtful advantages, but I have no liking for business whatever. Is there anything to be made out of horses or cattle?”

“Oh yes,” said Harding dryly. “There are men who make a good deal, but you want ten or fifteen thousand dollars to begin with, anyway. It’s only a big ranch that pays. Quite sure you wouldn’t like to try your hand at business? I could introduce you to one or two men if you came out to Glenwood and stayed a week with me.”

Appleby felt that the keen blue eyes were quietly scrutinizing him. “No,” he said. “There is a fact I must mention which I also think would prevent you wishing to entertain me. A business man hiring anybody would have questions to ask, and I left the old country suddenly. I am not sure that a charge of manslaughter has not been brought against me by this time.”