The Project Gutenberg eBook of The mating impulse

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Title: The mating impulse

Author: Edwin Balmer

Release date: March 24, 2024 [eBook #73249]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith Corporation, 1914

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MATING IMPULSE ***

The Mating Impulse

By Edwin Balmer

Author of “The Peace Advocate, ” “Under the Orion,” Etc.

A comedy of “The Cause”—which almost became a tragedy. How an American girl became the most militant of militant suffragists and narrowly escaped a chance for a hunger strike in an English prison.

It was the day in autumn which, in Scotland and England, opens the season for red grouse, the great game bird of the northern counties and the highlands of heather; and at five o’clock in the glorious, clear afternoon, the Northeastern’s extra train from London, hurrying special parties of sportsmen to their Scotch shooting boxes, had gained the wooded hills of Durham and Northumberland.

Peace and tranquillity—almost somnolency—lay over the land. Gentle slopes of brown grain ripened in the sun; in meadows, red and white cattle grazed; a few farmers envied the passing sportsmen from gardens of late lettuce and greens. Beyond and all about were heavy woodlands, deep green with the sun on oak leaves, burnished with the copper of beeches and with the ground all dark with the shade of ancient, guarded trees. A lane through them showed an English gentleman’s home unchanged in four hundred years; the towers of a Norman cathedral asked no more favors of the woods than it had eight centuries earlier, when Northumberland knight and esquire looked to the stone summits from the road upon which the train now ran. The sparkle of water sometimes shone as the land lowered to the right. There was the North Sea; and if it brought to the sportsmen disturbing thoughts of Germany beyond, it showed them also a British dreadnaught steaming off the coast on watch.

The newspapers brought reports of grouse in unusual numbers; coveys clouded the moors. As the train ran more silently, the eager yelp of the bird dogs in the forward vans came to the men in the reserved compartments. Servants entered to lift tea baskets down from the racks heavy with guns; they lit spirit lamps and arranged sandwiches. The English, upon the extra train for Scotland, sighed with deep content.

Andy Farnham, the American in Lord Morton’s party, alone marred the universal satisfaction. He sat at his window—and the possession of a forward window seat in a compartment with seven Englishmen proved him a young man of no mean enterprise—disconsolate, discouraged. He was a tall, lithe-shouldered gentleman of some twenty-five tanned summers, with the firm hand of the racing motorist, the enviable poise of a man who has survived a pair of monoplanes, and with the abiding faith in his final fortunes which such repeated survival begets. Now, however, between depths of despondency, he opened the pages of an English quarterly review and read—in open disregard of his companions in the compartment—an article by a leading German authority entitled “The Psychology of the Suffragist Outbreaks.”

Anon, the English disported themselves after their fashion.

“I say, Andrew, dear fellow, perk up! Some one will surely arrest her for you soon. Monte, how’s this? Suppose the police chaps, who are after Miss Leigh, catch her; and then Andy, here, finding her, you see, should get her to marry him—would you call that marriage by capture? Rather rare, what?”

“Oh, put it in Punch,” Andy appealed and let a servant hand him tea.

He was in England, as his world knew, to find Roberta Leigh. She, as all the world was widely aware, had passed a very, very stirring summer in Britain burning and laying waste to win votes for women. Yet for more than a month, Andy had followed her trail vainly. Therefore, he now was abandoning the search; first, because it had begun to dawn upon him that, unless Roberta wished him to find her, the results of success in his search would be decidedly doubtful; and second, for some weeks the efforts of the London police, aided by the outraged local authorities of nine shocked shires and counties, had made any purely private pursuit of Miss Leigh seem superfluous. So, as he proceeded north, he contented himself with buying the papers to learn what the police were accomplishing. Between times he read his review.

“Those observers who see in the feminist movement a weakening of the mating impulse in the woman,” he repeatedly rehearsed one paragraph, “are grievously mistaken. Indeed, the feminist movement—particularly in its most violent manifestations on the part of the so-called militant suffragettes—is only a newer phase of the pseudo defiance of man by woman which, from the earliest times, has been employed by woman to attract man.”

He looked up and, carefully putting his finger in the place at the paragraph, he stared out the car window as the train stopped. It was at only a little country station where a spur of track ran from the main line. Passengers were changing to a couple of stubby cars standing on that spur. Since he personally resolutely had abandoned the search for Roberta, he did not scrutinize the passengers closely. He merely made sure that there were only two girls in sight, and that the one, who might possibly be mistaken for Roberta, was not she; then he drew his head back within the window. His train started deliberately. He was glancing down to find his page in the pleasant quarterly review, when a pile of luggage on the platform appeared. On top of the pile stood a small, black, oblong, week-end box—half trunk, half hand bag—much pasted with customs labels and scratched with chalk, but quite definite and individual of size and shape. Andy saw it, and, with the startled cry of the incredulous, jumped to his feet, reckless of where the tea splashed.

“That’s hers. Join you later, if I’m wrong,” he condensed explanation, farewell, and promise to his hosts; and, as the train was still moving slowly, and the compartment was private and not locked, he opened the door and sprang down upon the end of the platform.

The train for Scotland kept on; the passengers for the stubby cars on the spur were settling themselves in their seats. Swiftly but thoroughly, Andy searched through each compartment. He was beginning to think he might have been impulsive in leaving his party when he returned to the pile of luggage. But there was no possible doubt of the week-end box. Its owner might not be present; but it was, or at least it had been, possessed by her for whom he—and the police also—searched.

“Who’s with that?” he demanded of the luggage porter bearing it toward the train.

“Wot?” the man put it down with resigned reproach. “And now you clime it, sir?”

Andy assured that, so far from asserting possession, his whole desire was to discover the owner.

She, it appeared, had proceeded some twenty-four hours previously through this junction to the ancient and historic town of Stoketon to which definite designation, the porter fervently prayed, the stubby train safely and swiftly would convey the box and thereby spare a hitherto careful and completely competent porter from further blame for misunderstanding the direction of the index finger of a gentleman much under the influence of liquor the day before, who appeared to claim the black box for his own, and was satisfied to take it with him twenty miles in the wrong direction. Simultaneously with the gentleman’s sobering up and returning the box, female inquiry had come from Stoketon. No, nothing more alarming than the loss of luggage had been heard from Stoketon.

Apparently, Roberta was still there and would remain, as nothing yet had happened. Possibly the contents of the box were such that she could not proceed to the business of her visit without it. Andy watched, not without apprehension, as the porter dumped the box onto the luggage van. Nothing eventuated; and, as the stubby train was starting, he got into the nearest passenger compartment.

Two American girls shared the seats with him—one was the girl who, for a moment, he had believed might be Roberta when he saw her on the platform. But these were not of the caste of mind to be among Roberta’s associates. An adventure was up for discussion between them; it was nothing more violent or destructive in character than a project to purchase certain extra items of dress at the price of returning to America second class or, perhaps, steerage. The girl, something like Roberta, and about her age of twenty-four, urged this. Andy groped absently on the seat beside him for his magazine. He had dropped it on the other train; so he contented himself, as he sat back, with rehearsing its most encouraging paragraphs.

The shadows of the long English twilight rose from the hills; the smoke of the evening fires lifted lazily from the chimney pots of a little town as the train stopped at Stoketon. Andy, stepping out at the station, stood staring about a moment, looking, listening, as if expectant. An old castle showed on a hill; in another quarter, a church from which chimes sounded softly. He looked from one of these to the other, and then glanced toward a third prominent structure, the nature of which he could not determine. He seemed expecting some sudden change in one of them. The moving off of the train recalled him. The girls who had shared the compartment with him had alighted there, too, and were instructing the porters where to take their luggage. The men moved off, leaving Roberta’s black, week-end box on the platform alone.

Andy sat down and watched it; but concern over it had ceased. It was left on the platform, unclaimed and uncalled for, when the last porter lit the lamps and placed them on the switches and in the signal positions. Evidently the stubby train was to return that night; but not soon. The last porter closed the station and started away.

“Which are the inns to which ladies might go alone?” Andy asked the man. “Not very timid ladies,” he particularized.

The first three hostelries suggested gave Andy only blanks; but at the fourth, which he reached when at last the twilight had gone into the soft autumn night, he studied the register of guests with greater care. Roberta’s name did not appear; but another name was written by a hand which, though disguised, could have been hers. He sent up his card to Miss Constance Everett in room eighteen. She was stopping there, it appeared, with an English aunt, and she had gone to her room early with the aunt who had a headache.

Andy looked about as he waited. The place was perfect for the planning of catastrophe—an ancient inn with dim, paneled walls, ceiling beamed and smoked by sweet wood fires, a sleepy, unsuspicious guest house, offering always its old flagon of cherry cordial to greet each visitor, and holding other traditions unchanged to charm old ladies traveling.

Miss Everett did not respond to the knock on her door; her aunt also seemed asleep. Did the gentleman, who undoubtedly was a close friend, if not a connection, wish Miss Everett awakened?

“Please,” Andy requested; but before the servant left the hall, he recalled caution. “No, do not disturb her; let no one disturb her. Give me a room, please.”

As he followed his guide, he noted carefully the position of room eighteen. He went down again, and, denying his need for supper, stepped out to smoke in the garden.

In the deepest shade of the old oaks, and where roses scented the air, in a dark angle at the rear of the garden under room eighteen, a rope hung down from an opened window—a rope knotted and looped for climbing. He pulled it; it was firmly, expertly secured. Roberta’s business of the evening—which evidently did not require the contents of the black box—was on. Andy stood silent in the perfect peace and stillness of the night, and listened as he had when first he stood at the station; but now he was certain of immediate happenings. Yet still through the village of Stoketon, quiet and unsuspecting serenity continued to reign. Andy walked out to the road. The lights of the little town were beginning to twinkle one by one; the good people of Stoketon were going to bed. He snuffed out his cigar and returned to watch beside the rope in the rear of the garden.

A light figure—a girl’s—leaped over the low palings; standing, panting, she listened a moment before she came farther. Andy, creeping back on the soft carpet of the thick turf, hid himself in the blackest shadow. The girl came on and reached the rope; she put her foot in a loop, and climbed up a yard or two; then stopped. He thought she had heard him as he stepped closer; but she had not. She descended to the ground and stood waiting for something; and a flash—a sudden yellow and crimson flame of fire—astonished the sky; a second after it, the low rumble of an explosion thudded the air. Andy, though he had been expecting it, startled and spun, surprised, trying to place the source of the flash and sound. But the girl only laughed.

“Roberta!” he hailed her cautiously.

Instinctively she seized the rope and started to climb it; then recognition of his voice seemed to register.

“Who’s that?”

“Me—Andy.”

“I know now. What do you want?”

He came closer—boldly. “You.”

The beginnings of alarm were breaking out about them; there arose shouts and calls and frightened cries.

“What was that, Roberta?” he demanded.

“What was what?”

“Was that the cathedral or the castle?”

“Oh,” she laughed. “Neither; the armory.”

“The armory? I see; you mean the big building on—or rather which was on that hill?” He indicated the direction of the third structure seen from the station.

She nodded. “It seems to be catching now quite nicely.”

Flames, indeed, were beginning to blaze after the darkness which had succeeded the first flash of fire; and the whole village, shocked and in outrage, stirred in tumult.

“Come; let’s go with them and take it all in,” Roberta suggested mischievously. “Meet me in front in a minute; I’d better go up to my room and down through the inn. I don’t need your help, thanks.”

She put her foot again in the loops, and climbed easily. Andy satisfied himself with holding the rope steady. She was almost at her window when she halted and stood in the loops.

“Foot caught? Can I help you?” he called.

“Hush!” She dropped a step.

Noise from within the inn, which had halted her, now reached Andy. Some one was knocking at her door—not doubtfully, but with the sharp raps of demand for admittance; a pause for reply; then men’s voices and men’s shoulders against the door; it came down with a crash, and the room was lit by dancing yellow lamps brandished in hand.

Roberta slid swiftly down the rope, and dropped to the grass. Andy caught her; her light hair was against his lips; he felt her breath, as she stood against him, gloriously excited, and she lifted her head to look up to her window. Her tense, slender hands held to him tight; she let her lithe, active little figure lie inert another moment half held by him. As she whispered to him, she was exultant in the completeness of the success of her mission; but her breathing told him that his presence there added to her triumph; she was glad he had witnessed it. She admitted that without meaning to.

“It’s never been like this before!”

The memory of the paragraph by the German psychologist further emboldened him. “Bobs, you—you don’t care a thing about votes for women!”

“What? Of course I do!” She freed herself indignantly; but returned at once to him to feel his share in the effect of her adventure. “Listen to them, Andy; isn’t it great to hear them! They can’t believe that a girl would do it!”

“Those are only the local gallants.” Andy cautioned as he listened. “The fellow who’s followed you from London doesn’t seem harassed by doubts.”

“Andy, till you do it yourself, you’ve no possible basis of appreciating the perfect deliciousness of shocking them so. You couldn’t appreciate it then; you’d have to be a woman with ten thousand generations of downtrodden, meek-made women behind you who wanted to smash things and never dared; you’d——”

“Come away,” Andy begged. “They’ve seen your rope now.”

Outcry from above confirmed him, so she let him guide her out of the garden and down the road, where they found a hiding place behind a hedge. They stopped while scared and horrified citizenry passed them. The armory on the hill was burning now with less flame and more smoke, rewarding local fire volunteers for their labors; but the clamor in pursuit of the perpetrators of the outrage increased.

“Are they always so close up on you?” Andy whispered respectfully, as officers, shouting descriptions of Roberta, stumbled past.

“Not always,” she said modestly.

“What was your plan for the getaway?”

“Through my room, of course—but there’s no use thinking about that now. They know me now and that I did it.”

Andy listened. “Yes; they seem to feel pretty sure of you, too.”

“Oh, they have before!” she boasted. “But I’m all right. You’d better leave me now,” she ordered independently. “Awfully glad to have seen you.” She offered her hand; he put his behind his back, trying to think what to say. The outcry about them continued.

A group of burghers, not actively in the woman hunt, went past.

“Reedy and ’is wife?” one repeated. “How about them? They was sleepin’ there, you know. Since they was turned from their house, Higgins had let them there.”

“What’s that?” Roberta suddenly gasped. Her hand, held toward Andy, quickly clutched him, and clung with the instinctive twinge of dependence.

“Aye! Reedy? How about Reedy?” another voice lamented.

Roberta barely breathed. “Andy! They are saying that some one was sleeping in the armory—a man and woman. I was sure no one was there; no one was supposed to be there. But some one was!”

“They aren’t sure of that; besides, if this Reedy and his wife were there, you don’t know that they were hurt!” Andy as instantly felt the instinct to protect and reassure.

“Reedy and ’is wife; no word, eh?” the voice on the road hailed.

“Andy, if I killed them, it was murder! I thought once I heard some one moving inside; then I said I only imagined it; and I did it! Andy!” She was only woman now—all woman of the old, clinging, appealing, precatastrophic kind pleading to man for protection. “You’ve got to find out and help me! Andy, take me away from here—anywhere, any way!”

“Can you stay here a moment by yourself—very quiet, without being afraid?” The instant before the question would have been the essence of lunacy. “Can I leave you—dear?” he ventured now, and she made no protest.

“I think so.”

He held his arm about her to steady her for a moment; he could feel her trembling. Then, cautiously creeping out, he joined the others thronging to witness the smoking ruins of the armory. There men moved, carefully, searching the ground. Andy attentively listened to their remarks, and returned to the hiding place behind the hedge. Roberta—if the evidence of a wet handkerchief balled in her hand meant anything—had spent the interval crying.

“Cheer up; they’ve not found any evidence of any one being caught in the armory,” he reported.

“Tell me the truth,” she implored.

“Well, it seems that this old man, Reedy, and his wife sometimes had been sleeping there; but——”

“Then I did kill them!”

“I really don’t think you did,” he denied. “But if it will keep you a little more tractable, go on thinking so; for, whether or not you’ve killed them, from what I’ve heard you’d better get out of here as quick as you can.”

“I’ll do whatever you say.” She clung to him as the hue and cry again came close. A recollection of herself the half hour before came to her. “Andy,” she questioned in awe, “why am I this way now?”

“You’re all right,” he patted her. “Don’t feel ashamed of yourself. You’ve really smashed up things mighty competently for a girl. But, Bobs, you can’t expect to learn to smash sincerely or thoroughly all at once. You’ve got to have a few thousand generations of your sex behind you who really smashed to be entirely dependable at it. Then you wouldn’t be so broken up about the idea of perhaps a little unintentional killing.”

“Don’t!” she begged, and pulled him farther back from the road as two officers approached, bundling an American girl between them. But Andy, recognizing the captive in the light of the lanterns, shook Roberta about sternly.

“Quick! That isn’t one of your people—one who was in this with you?”

“That girl?” Roberta managed. “No.”

“Of course not; they think she’s you. They’ve arrested her for you, do you hear? Now you stay here, Bobs, till I come back!”

He gained the road again, and followed the men having in custody his traveling companion of the afternoon whom, when he first saw her, he himself had mistaken for Roberta. She was somewhat frightened; but, as they paraded her before the citizenry, it was clear that she was more proud and pleased with her borrowed prominence. This lasted only a few moments, however; at the inn, where Roberta had stopped, this girl was identified as not Roberta, and released with apologies. So, as she was sinking sorrowfully back to obscurity, Andy approached her.

Fifty very fully occupied minutes later, he rejoined Roberta in her hiding place.

“Come with me now,” he commanded. “I’m going to take you home. Never mind about any other clothes. Your things at the inn are in the hands of the police; your box at the station is now on the way, by that train which whistled ten minutes ago, to Southampton in the possession of a Miss Harriet Dale, a somewhat sporting schoolteacher from Ohio, I believe. Instead of going back steerage—as she was considering—she returns on the Corinthian to-morrow as you. With a little encouragement any one might take her for you, as you’ve seen. After the Corinthian’s at sea, and there’s no stop before New York, she’ll furnish the encouragement. She will be taken for you; the wireless will announce the news to the shore; so all other search will cease till the Corinthian’s in New York, and she again is identified as not you. But before that time, you and I—on the Cumberland, which sails from Glasgow in just eight hours—will have been safe and at large in the land of the free for some hours. I’ve figured it all out and arranged it. If we can stay unsuspected for a day, we’re all right. There’s an automobile waiting for us outside the town. Come on!”

“You and I? How can we?” Roberta questioned.

“We must elope—or seem to be eloping. I’ve tried to think of something else, for your sake; but that is the only safe thing. It is the one subterfuge no one would associate with a suffragette.”

The Royal Mail S. S. Cumberland, from Glasgow for New York, steamed down the Firth of Clyde in a soft, Scottish rain; outside, off the northern coast of Ireland, there was fog. Showers on that first day at sea sometimes thinned it to a mist; but throughout the second day the foghorn of the Cumberland blew its long blast every two minutes; and from ahead, abeam, and astern answering bellows from steam whistles warned the passing of other ships lost behind the thick fog curtains and enforced the need for half speed day and night, and less when vessels blundered in close.

Then the ships bound westward on the same course, and the passing vessels, eastbound, spread farther and farther apart, and were separated by a safer distance; but still on that steamship lane across the North Atlantic, fog shrouded the sea; as far ahead as the Grand Banks—so ships sent word by the wireless—the ocean was gray and greasy with fog. And, in the perverse manner which the elements have when men must count upon their fairness, the sea and sky were clear during those days and nights upon the course of steamers for New York out of the English Channel and steering from the south of Ireland. By the second night, therefore, the Southampton liner Corinthian had made up half of the advantage of the Cumberland’s earlier start from the Scottish port. As the steamship lanes drew closer and closer together in mid-Atlantic, the two ships came within easy wireless communication.

So Mr. Andy Farnham read the following on the bulletin board as he came up from breakfast to go on deck on the third day at sea:

NEW BULLETIN FOR FIRST-CABIN PASSENGERS.

As previously announced, wireless communication has been established with R. M. S. Corinthian from Southampton. It will be of interest to know that the officers of the Corinthian definitely have identified the young woman, suspected since sailing of being Roberta Leigh, as being, indeed, the violent American suffragist who is wanted by the English police for criminal participation in the destruction of many public buildings in England, including the government armory at Stoketon. The intelligence has been sent by wireless to England. The crown officers have congratulated the captain of the Corinthian for his valuable service. The knowledge that she had been recognized has not been communicated to Miss Leigh; but she is being held under strict surveillance till she will be handed over to the proper representative of the crown at New York.

The Corinthian has found very favorable weather, and is now commanded to make all possible haste in order that Miss Leigh may be returned to England by the S. S. Mauretania, sailing Saturday from New York, and immediately be brought to answer for her crimes before an English court.

The last sentence more than counteracted for Mr. Farnham the pleasure following the perusal of the first paragraph. The bulletin was dated at midnight; now it was after eight o’clock. The blasts from the foghorn proclaimed the persistence of foul weather. He gave his place before the bulletin board to other passengers crowding in eager interest. He went into the writing room, and, after considering for a moment, scribbled curtly:

8:10 a. m.

You may, with caution, partially recover and come on deck.

A.

Sealing this, he inscribed it to Miss Olive Carew at a number in the women’s cabins, and sent it by a stewardess. Then, pulling down his cap, and turning up his collar and lighting a cigar, he stepped out on deck.

He had sensed from the vibration when he was below that the engines were turning over at not even half speed. The fog still shut off everything but two hundred yards of the gray, greasy waves; but it gave enough sight of these to show that the ship’s progress was slow indeed. In the intervals between the deafening blasts of the great steam whistle overhead, the fog signals of another ship sounded, now ahead, now—confusingly—abeam; now ahead again.

He walked forward on the dripping promenade. Though such daylight as there was had been established for two hours, the deck electrics still burned to give light to groups of pallid, ulstered passengers, rug-tucked into their steamer chairs, nibbling biscuit and sipping chicken bouillon for their breakfast. These chatted, with an exciting sense of adventure, of Roberta Leigh; others communicated details of some rescue during the night. As he turned to the opposite side of the ship, Andy saw a crowd about an old and battered seaboat hanging in the Cumberland’s davits, which was clearly not an appendage of the liner. He pushed nearer, and smelled fish, and saw the name Susan Daw in battered paint upon the little boat’s stern.

“That’s what we stopped for early this morning,” volunteered the relief wireless operator, just going off duty for the day.

“I didn’t know we stopped.”

“Yes; a trawler went to pieces out here a couple of days ago. They were blown out here right in the steamer lanes; the crew were in two boats; but no one saw them till we picked this one up. The other boat’s somewhere out there yet; no ship’s reported it. We made a circle, and have been going slower to look for it. I’ve reported picking this up and told about the other; so every other ship coming through here will be on the watch. That shows what wireless does. Those boats drifted right across the steamer lanes for five days, and no one found one, till we happened right across this, because there was no wireless on the trawler to call help.”

“I slept right through the stop, I guess; mine’s an inside cabin,” Andy explained. “How long were we stopped?”

“Pretty long; and we spent some time searching for the other boat.”

Andy waited a moment. “What news from the Corinthian?” he asked carelessly.

“She’s about caught up with us now, and is going right on. She’s under special orders to hurry, you know. They certainly mean to do things to that poor suffragette girl, Roberta Leigh. You know——”

Andy was favored with confidential communications picked up by the Cumberland’s wireless. Not to show too great interest, he soon moved away. Roberta, if she was to respond to his instructions, soon would come on deck. Thus far, by keeping strictly to her cabin since he had brought her on shipboard, she had obeyed him; it had been a highly unusual experience.

Since she was six and he seven, and their parents had built big country places in Connecticut side by side, he and Roberta had been opponents, rivals, defiers of the daring of each other. As children they had secretly risked their necks on the same dangerous horses, jumped from the same high windows, climbed the same trees. What she lacked in strength, she made up for a time in superior lightness and agility; then slowly but surely the handicap of her skirts, which had to be let down, told against her. No further refinement of skill in her short strokes at golf made up his increasing advantage in the long drives; and she was confined still to tennis when he broke in at polo. Then motor racing and flying came to him; her only sufficient retort was taking to suffragettism as committed in England. He was more than half aware that it was his spring exploits with his last wrecked monoplane which had hurried her to England; but, till he had happened across those pleasing paragraphs in the quarterly review, he had not dared to think that she had acted in different spirit toward him than after he first greeted her over the garden gate:

“Hello! What’s your name? Bobs? Huh! Girl tryin’ to make out you’re a boy!”

“What if I am a girl? Bet anything I can stump you!”

Was it just possible that, as his lost and lamented quarterly review claimed, her last acts had been in only false defiance of him—“the pseudo defiance of man by woman which, from the earliest times, has been employed by woman to attract man.”

He had believed that he had followed her to England with no feeling more akin to love than when, long before, he used to swim out after her to bring her back when she struck too far from the shore, and when she, not needing his help, swam easily back, teasing him. But this time she had needed his help; and since the incredible, unique, delicious moments of her clinging and appealing to him and his feeling her soft and weak and dependent in his arms, he was certain of very different sensations toward her. For those few moments, at least, she was changed toward him; then had followed their precipitate flight to Glasgow and their days of separation while she kept to her cabin on the ship. Had the change endured with her? He paced anxiously, impatiently, up and down awaiting her appearance.

A laugh of amusement, gently raillerous, brought him about. Roberta lay in a steamer chair, reclining comfortably in the Scotch plaid ulster he had bought for her at Glasgow, and with her wavy brown hair caught up under the tam-o’-shanter also there purchased by him. Her cheeks, in contrast with the pallid people in the distant chairs, were ruddy, and her laughing lips full and red.

“You’re a convincing-looking invalid for having been confined to your cabin since we left Scotland,” he greeted her instinctively in their old, accustomed manner, to which she had returned. He dropped into one of the empty chairs near her. “I suppose you were dressed when you got my note?”

“What note?”

“Why, my line ten minutes ago telling you that you could come on deck now.”

“Thank you! I went to breakfast at seven in the main saloon—about half an hour before you were up, I fancy. I tramped about a while, and have been here since.”

“I see. So you heard that my substitute for you has been really identified as you on board the Corinthian?”

“Nice of her to go through with it,” Roberta granted; “but I hadn’t heard anything except that I hadn’t hurt that Reedy man and his wife at all. They’ve both been found safe; so I only did what I had meant to do.”

“You merely burned down the armory, you mean?”

“Yes—just property; so I saw no reason for keeping cooped up in that stuffy cabin any longer.”

Andy angered. “What’s the game, Roberta?”

“Game?” in surprise.

“You’d better go down and read a few of the last bulletins—or, still better, talk to the wireless operator and learn the more confidential preparations for your reception and entertainment upon your return to England—if you suppose that the British government is so relieved to find that you didn’t burn Reedy and spouse that it’s going to give you a vote of thanks for merely blowing up government property. I told you that you might come on deck, if you took care not to attract too much attention, because no one will be suspecting you while the Corinthian is still at sea. Our friend, the sporty schoolteacher, seems to have come through with an impersonation which had convinced the officers of the Corinthian; but she can’t fool the reception committee at New York. Your face and figure, my dear girl, are easily the most familiar in all the U. S. A. this week. You must know how the newspapers hate to give space to a girl like you who’s been such a quiet little body all summer. I’ll bet there haven’t been more than an average of eight different pictures of you in all poses run in each edition this week. Reporters may meet the Corinthian on the high seas, but I feel that probably no one will board the boat before it picks up its pilot; then two tugs from the less enterprising papers and four from the moving-picture concerns will greet our friend, your doubtful double, at quarantine. They’ll know before they’ve taken a thousand feet of film of her that she isn’t you. Then even the English will guess where you are. If the Corinthian could only run out of gasoline, or blow a tire or crack a cylinder, and let us get in first, all right for us; but if the Corinthian goes on in ahead of us, you—dear girl—are elected to be the example to be made to discourage any more of this foreign-legion stuff in the ranks of the British suffragettes. The home secretary seems to feel that you are most eminently qualified to serve as a stopper for more of our sweet girl graduates crossing over and spending their senior vacations at pillage and arson. Rough of them, undoubtedly; but if the Cumberland comes in second, it’s forcibly fed from a funnel for the rest of your natural youth, my dear.”

“Why,” Roberta returned resignedly, “do you repeat the if so many times? Isn’t the Cumberland now sure to come in second?”

“The Corinthian’s caught up with us now. They’re a little faster than this ship ordinarily, and at present they’re under emphatic orders to make as fast a passage as possible. Even if I should give away our hand by offering to pay our captain for extra coal he’d burn to beat the Corinthian in, this ship couldn’t do it.”

“Exactly,” Roberta accepted. “So why pretend that I think I’m escaping? And why say ‘our’ hand? It was entirely your idea that this ship was sure to get in before the Corinthian—not mine.”

Andy fumed helplessly. He idly watched men working on the woodwork beside the wireless cabin. Before painting, they were sandpapering a strip, rasping coarse sandpaper, tacked on blocks, over the patch to be painted. The harsh, grating sound came with a short rasp, then longer, then shorter. Roberta looked about.

“I thought that was the wireless for a minute,” she said.

“Sounds like it.”

People passed, glancing at them curiously. “I’d better ask you,” Roberta said, “what are our relations supposed to be since we’ve been on board? Your communication by note, evidently meant to be enigmatic if it fell into false hands, was enigmatic.”

“There appeared to be a choice of two explanations only, considering the way we piled on board at the last minute at once and demanded widely separated cabins. Either we must be married and part at the gangplank, or else, according to original scenario, we were eloping, with papa’s pursuit so close that we hadn’t had time to drop in on the minister. I choose the latter.”

“With the result?”

Andy confessed: “That yesterday the captain—most romantic of Scots—blushingly put forward his qualifications as legal wedlocker on the high seas.”

“Ah!”

“So I told him the seas were too high for you; you’d got seasick and changed your mind.”

Roberta looked away. “I told you if I stayed in my cabin, it must be on account of something else—even neuralgia. You know that I never get seasick; I hate people who get seasick.”

She rose suddenly and walked away. He thought for an instant that she had used a different tone—not quite the same tone which had surprised him at Stoketon when she gave herself to his protection, but at least something like that tone. But, as he watched her walk away, he knew he must have imagined it. Her air of complete disregard of him had never piqued him more. He jumped up and caught step with her.

“Kindly do not assume that the Corinthian is certain to beat us in!”

“How are you going to prevent it?” she questioned practically.

He did not tell her, for the sufficient reason that he did not know; but that it must be done he now was certain; and there was little time to lose to learn the way to do it. He let her leave him and go within without protest. He paced round and round the deck.

“Fog’s thinning.” His friend, the relief wireless operator, stopped beside him at the rail.

Indeed, it was fog no longer; the cessation of the blasts of the siren overhead admitted it; only mist remained, and it was a swiftly melting mist which blew with the breeze and vanished under the noon high sun. The horizon showed sharp, clear, as the pale blue of the sunny sky met the deep green of the sea in a line all about the circle of sight. One blotch only broke it—a spot of smoke on the very horizon edge, a spot which was quite abreast the Cumberland, and slowly, very slowly, but quite surely, was creeping ahead.

The operator went into the wireless station and returned.

“That’s the smoke of the Corinthian. She’s brought her good weather with her; and she’s going right on to put that girl aboard the Mauretania to take her back to jail in England. Say, do you know, I’d like to do something for that girl? They’re laying to give her altogether too much. Looking at it some ways, she’s all right. I got a sister in the suffrage cause myself.”

Andy looked swiftly about, and sized up the operator more carefully. “Why didn’t you say so before?” he demanded.

The operator moved nearer and spoke cautiously: “I wasn’t sure till to-day why it was you was so interested in what was coming in.”

“So you feel sure now, do you?”

“Can’t say that,” the operator said conservatively. “But I’ve got a noodle, even if everything isn’t as clear as it might be in it just now. But don’t worry; nobody else is wise, and I ain’t said nothing.”

“On account of your sister?”

The operator looked at Andy’s hands, which were in his pockets. “Partly,” he said.

“Is it better for you to come to my cabin, or safer for me to go to yours?” Andy inquired. “Not that I’ve got a proposition yet; but—well, two heads are better than one.”

The conference below decks, though of no short duration, brought to Andy little definite encouragement. During all the latter part of the afternoon, which remained clear and bright though the wind now was rising, he paced the deck thoughtful, alone. The smoke on the southern horizon which marked the position of the Corinthian crept steadily farther ahead.

Above the setting sun spread a flaming and crimson sky; and out from under it the smoke and then the hull of a steamer appeared. It was eastbound to England, and between the paths of the Cumberland and Corinthian. Twilight failed over the ocean before it met the Cumberland; its smoke smudge was lost in the blackness of night, its spars vanished save for a swaying masthead light, and its decks became lines of electric lights backed by the glow of cabin windows where passengers were dressing for dinner.

As Andy stood at the rail watching the other vessel pass, Roberta stopped at his side. “You look quite desperate in your planning for me,” she rallied. “Tell me, what is the present program, per your arrangement? Am I to do a dive with you and swim for that boat, and double back to England?”

The relief wireless operator, halting, excused Andy from reply. “That’s the Wellington—an old hooker, and slow, but still popular. First, second, and steerage always full. Economical’s the word with her. Every ship’s supposed to have two men for the wireless, since the Titanic; but they manage most of the time—as this trip—with one. They’d wake up their man to get help if anything happened to them; but from about ten p. m. to say five a. m., another ship in trouble would have a great time calling them.”

Andy gazed long at the ship, the great idea dawning. “Excuse us,” he said to Roberta. “My friend,” he announced to the operator, “something tells me that you and I need only go again into executive session to get immediate results.”

Roberta, watching for him to come into the dining saloon, waited in vain till the stewards ceased to serve. Likewise, after going to her chair on deck, she looked for him without result. There now was a good sea running—nothing to trouble a large ship, but quite enough to send most of the passengers below. The wind, blowing down from the Arctic Sea, was quite cold and damp, though the air still was clear. Roberta rose, with her coat buttoned about her, and tramped the tipping, wind-swept decks.

The salt spray was flying; she felt its sting on her face, tasted it on her lips. She went to the forward rail and clung to it as the Cumberland rolled and rose and dipped and rolled again as it bore steadily into the darkness ahead. It had become so late that the stewards had turned out all the deck lights except the single yellow glows over the companionways; and these now were dimmer and failing, incrusted with salt. And no light or sign of any other ship showed about all the black horizon. The Corinthian never had been near enough for her lights to show at night; the Wellington long had been lost in the purple darkness astern. The skies clouded over; no glint came down from the stars. The Cumberland rolled on to America alone, only the wireless—the rasp of which could be heard from the cabin—told where they were to other ships. Roberta drew in deep breaths of delight at the desolateness of the ocean, the openness and freedom of the wide water. Suddenly, with a recollection, she shuddered.

“What is it?” Andy’s voice surprised her. She felt his strong fingers steadying her arm.

“I don’t want to be taken back to England to jail!” she confessed to him before she could prevent herself. “I believed I didn’t mind; I thought it would be part of the fun. But tonight”—she hesitated as to how to express it—“feel that wind, breathe it! It’s all open, all free! I want to feel it like that whenever I’d like to. I don’t want to be locked up!”

“I don’t want you to, either.” His grasp on her tightened. “And you’re not going to be. No one’s going to take you back to jail in England or anywhere else. We’re going to be landed without any one troubling us, just as I planned. Then you can go anywhere you want to.”

“How are we going to get ashore before the Corinthian docks?”

He laughed confidently. “I will get you!”

“But how?” she repeated, with concern.

“Don’t worry. You’ll wake up as far ahead of the Corinthian as I ever meant you to be.”

“I’m not thinking about myself. What are you planning to do? Nothing—dangerous, Andy! You know how nearly I hurt people.”

“No, no,” he reassured. “Nothing dangerous; something quite safe, serene, secure, Bobs. Merely——”

“What?”

“Expensive. That wireless operator is not so completely carried away by sympathy for you and suffrage for his sister as he seemed.”

“What did you say?”

“I’ll tell you to-morrow. I want to do it first; and it’s getting along toward time. So you go in now; good night.”

“Good night,” she said. He had commanded; she had not meant to obey; but now, when she found herself doing it, she did not deter.

“Bobs!” he caught her gently.

“What?”

“A kiss, dear!”

“A kiss?”

He took it before arguing further. “That’s all right,” he justified, as he took another. “No one’s about, Bobs! You kissed me that second time!”

“I did the first time, too!”

“Like that? Of course; but how could you have expected me to believe anything more than I was kissing you?”

“Andy!” She was held tight in his arms. “What do you and I mean?”

“I don’t know except that we mean it together.”

“What?”

“To get married, I guess; don’t we?”

“We must.”

The ship’s bell struck fluidly; in a moment there was some sort of confusion and calling—apparently on account of changing watches—and men came by. Andy put Roberta reluctantly away.

“You must go in now. No; you can’t help, dear. You might only hinder. Of course, I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I can.”

She stopped only for one more meeting of their lips, and then, no longer wondering at her obedience, she disappeared down the nearest companionway. Andy moved in an ecstasy down the deck; if he had had doubts before of what he was about to do, they were unfelt in this incredible delight. He loved little Bobs; she loved him; they could be married if he carried through what already he had planned. He was reckless to, oblivious of the confusion on deck except as it threatened his plans. Then most of the men moving about and running back and forth from the bridge vanished below; they left the decks almost deserted, and gave him his opportunity to act. He crept up to the wireless cabin. The rasp of the current in sending a communication came to him clearly. He waited tensely till it ceased; then he opened the door and entered the cabin, swiftly shutting the door behind him and locking it. The relief wireless operator was alone within, seated before his instruments.

“All right?” Andy demanded of him.

“The Corinthian’s in easy communication, of course—a little ahead of us, and twenty or thirty miles to the south.”

“She’s also within communication radius of the Wellington?”

“Sure; the Wellington’s now about a hundred miles east of us. If we sent out a call as if it came from the Wellington, the Corinthian couldn’t tell whether it came from us or the Wellington.”

“Good! And the Wellington wouldn’t know we were impersonating them? The Wellington’s operator has gone to bed now?”

“He certainly isn’t at his station.”

“Now’s the time, then. Quick, man. The S. O. S.! Send it! We’re the Wellington, in trouble. This ship is now the Wellington, a hundred miles east of us; and you’re sending out the S. O. S. call as the Wellington’s sinking!”

The operator shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Can’t! Why not?”

“I’ve been thinking it over.”

“Well?”

“We can’t call ‘Wolf!’ on the ocean. The wireless must always bring a ship to a ship in distress; no captain must doubt it a minute.”

“Once won’t do any harm,” Andy argued recklessly. “We’ll merely put the Corinthian back a hundred miles, and maybe bring back some other ship which gets the call. And think of the excitement we’ll give the passengers on the Corinthian till they find the Wellington isn’t sinking.”

“Yes; and when they find it out?”

“No one can ever find that you did it,” Andy returned impatiently. “We’ve gone all over this, man. No one can tell where a wireless message comes from. The Corinthian will think it comes from the Wellington. The Wellington won’t know we’ve called since the operator’s in bed. The Corinthian will call her, of course, and when there’s no answer that makes sure the Wellington’s in trouble. If the Corinthian calls us to go back to help the Wellington, too, we don’t get the call; our installation’s out of order for a few hours. Nothing could be simpler than that.”

“Still, it’s too much risk for five hundred.”

“Oh, all right. I expected a raise. A thousand for you, then.”

“No.”

“Two.”

“Not enough.”

“Three.”

“It might be found out here. The S. O. S. call is distinctive. You can hear the sending outside. If it is, I’m fired, and don’t get another job.”

“All right; four, then.”

The operator looked at Andy keenly. “How much higher will you go?” he asked frankly.

“Highbinder!” Andy accused him, and snatched pencil and pad. “S. O. S. Wellington sinking. S. O. S.,” he scribbled.

“Five thousand for four words; cash down!” He drew money from his pocket. “Five more if you’re caught and fired. My word for that. That’s all I had left on my letter of credit when I cashed it at Glasgow; but you know there’s more where this came from.”

The operator held his hand over his key and listened nervously. “Can they know about this now?” he asked. There seemed, indeed, to be already a movement on the bridge as if the officers had heard the scheme or suspected something. But Andy did not sense this, or was reckless of it. He pushed his money halfway across the table.

“I pay as you send. Ah, that’s it! S. O. S. That’s the stuff; there’s a thousand. Is that Wellington you’re spelling? Right; there’s a thousand more. ‘Sinking.’ Now ‘S. O. S.’ Four thousand and a fifth for the repeat to clinch it! Sent? Good! Put it away; put it away. They’re coming now!”

Indeed, the alarm, vague before, had become definite and loud. Men hammered on the locked door to the right of the wireless cabin and cried for entrance; and all about the noise of disturbance and haste increased.

“I told you they could hear it!” the operator gasped. He was bent over his table, his receivers to his ears, listening to the result of his message.

“You haven’t done any harm,” Andy steadied him. “And look here! Now you’ve done it, you’ve got to stand by what you did! You can’t take back all that!” He pulled the operator away from his instruments as the beating on the door threatened the panels. “If you want excuse for not taking it back, just don’t get that fixed for a few hours!” He seized a stool, and raised it to break some of the connections of the wireless apparatus. The wireless operator, opposing him in fright, tripped him, and Andy fell, his full weight crashing the heavy stool into the condensers and coils before him. The operator pressed down his key as he bent over the wreck in horror.

There came a yellow splutter, a loud crash of the powerful current, a blinding blue flash; then the smell of insulation burned, metal fused. And the door on the right to the deck burst open. Already Andy had unlocked the door on the other side; he pushed the wireless operator before him, and himself stumbled out upon the dark and slippery deck, where the spray from the sea flew in their faces.

The operator disappeared; Andy, left alone, slowly understood that some general alarm, which could not have been caused by his act in the wireless station, was spreading through the ship. Passengers, unsteady and in panic, were appearing on deck; and now the air was not salt with the smack of the sea; some strange, subtle, sickening scent changed it; and there came the cry in wild fright:

“Fire! Fire below! The ship’s on fire!”

Men, women, and children, half dressed, or with overcoats over night robes, rushed out from crowded companionways. Sailors and stewards and stewardesses attempted to control these; there was no fire, they said; or it was not serious; it was now being put out. But more passengers in night robes overwhelmed them. Andy stood, dazed, as they crushed toward the wireless station and clamored:

“Fire! The ship’s on fire! Call help! Call the Corinthian. We’re burning up!”

The touch of some one, quite calm and controlled, made him look about. Roberta was beside him, still dressed as she had been; she had not gone to bed; she had heard the first reports of the fire.

“There was an accident in the stores. Oil got afire and scattered. It seems to be beyond control. Get people to dress. The stewards and ones like you and I can bring out their clothes. Of course, we’ve called help by wireless. The Corinthian can’t be more than thirty miles away.”

“We can’t call it; it can’t come! It’s been called on an S. O. S. call to the Wellington!”

“What’s happened to the Wellington?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why is the Corinthian going to it?”

Andy told her.

“They must have our wireless repaired now,” she said, as they moved forward with the other passengers. “You couldn’t have broken it badly.”

But panic and terror of the passengers increased as they neared the wireless station. “There is no immediate danger. Everybody dress warmly!” Stewards and sailors attempted to command.

“What’s the matter with the wireless?” the cries about the cabin announced the silence of the instruments.

“What ship is coming to us? Why don’t we hear the wireless?”

In response a second officer showed himself at the door of the silent cabin. “The Corinthian is close to us!” he shouted. “Keep calm. She must soon come up!”

“When did you get her?” the shouts returned. “What’s the matter with the wireless? Can’t you call the Corinthian? Can’t you call any ship?”

“We’ve called the Corinthian; she’s coming now!” the officer lied loudly; but the people in panic sensed the lie.

“The wireless isn’t working! They haven’t called any ship! They can’t use it! It’s not working!”

The crazed crowds stumbling from the companionways heard and shouted it back over the ship. Denial of the danger below no longer was possible; the flames below were beginning to be felt; smoke seeped through the whole ship and hovered, a hot, steaming cloud, over the holds where the stores were blazing. Stewards and some of the men of the first cabin still moved about, attempting to quiet and reassure; but the seamen, in the details defined in the orders to abandon ship, were freeing the lifeboats, putting food and water in them; and officers directed with revolvers strapped over their uniforms and cartridges in the boxes on their belts.

The thud of pumps throwing sea water on the flames confused the vibrations of the screws; still, the shaking of the ship told that the engines were being forced their fastest.

Yet the sea about the Cumberland remained black and desolate. Rockets streaked into the sky from the Cumberland’s forecastle, signaling desperately that the ship was in dire danger, confessing that the wireless had failed.

“They can’t work the wireless!” Women screamed and swooned in the crush about the lifeboats. “They’ll put us in boats, and we’ll drift till we die. There’s no ship called to us!”

Andy, blocking the crush off from Roberta, was borne with her against the side of the cabins. He smelled fresh paint, and felt the greasiness of it on his hands. They were where the painters had been working. He lost Roberta from beside him; she had stooped, and was feeling for something at their feet. She straightened, and he saw in her hands two bits of board—the blocks with sandpaper tacked to them which the painter had used and left there.

“Get me nearer the wireless cabin,” she directed.

Not understanding, but obeying, he worked a way for her. He got past one of the sailors on guard outside the cabin. An officer appeared; Roberta spoke to him; he motioned her in curtly, and Andy followed.

The chief operator and the relief man were working feverishly over the wreck of the wireless apparatus; they stopped and tested their tangle of connections and coils, looked to each other, and tore out their own repairs. Outside the rockets again roared into the air; cries of terror increased. Roberta, crouching inside the wireless cabin out of sight from the deck, struck her sandpapered blocks together; a harsh, grating rasp resulted. The second officer half opened the door to the deck so it could be better heard, and himself seized the blocks.

“Rasp!” the sound grated, like the rough crackle of the current of the wireless in order. “Ras-sp!” A few of the passengers heard it; they cried to others, and more made it out.

“The wireless is working! We’re getting help!”

Rockets still shot into the sky; but now, instead of increasing the panic, these aided to control it. The wireless was working and bringing ships to help the Cumberland; the rockets were rising to show the Cumberland’s position as the rescue ships raced up.

In the wireless cabin, the second officer handed the blocks to another and nodded to him to keep them going.

“Some one ran in here half crazy just after the fire broke out, and did that.” He motioned Andy toward the wrecked apparatus. “A strange thing; the Wellington, a hundred miles east, just then was in trouble, too, and calling for help. Our man here heard the Corinthian respond, and say she was starting back. He was going to respond for us, when that was done, and our own trouble came.”

“Now where are we going?” Andy asked anxiously.

“There was no use in trying to catch the Corinthian—she’s faster than we, and would be going her best on an S. O. S. call. Our only chance of getting help soon is from the Elbe—the German ship ahead. She was about sixty miles ahead of us, bound for New York. We are assuming that she also must have got the S. O. S. call from the Wellington—though our man heard only the Corinthian respond. So we’re steering to run across the Elbe if she’s coming back to the Wellington. If she is, we should see her lights now in half an hour.”

“But if she didn’t get the Wellington’s call, and if she isn’t coming back?”

The officer set his lips firmly. “Then I guess we can get the women first into the boats, and keep them adrift until most of them, anyway, are picked up.” He looked to Roberta thankfully. “Since they think the wireless is going again, we can handle them more decently.”

Andy stared out over the dark sea. To the south and astern, the Corinthian, which could have been alongside before now, was racing more than a hundred miles away to pursue a sound ship. He had sent it on that pursuit. Somewhere out ahead—if the German Elbe also had happened to hear his false S. O. S. calls and was responding to them—was the ship which they might meet in time to save the Cumberland’s company. The rockets constantly exploded in the sky to attract it. Slowly, with terrible, heart-dragging counting of the minutes while the fire gained and gained again in spite of all the floods pumped into the hull, the half-hour passed. Still the electricians worked over the wireless apparatus; only the rasping of sandpapered blocks still tricked the passengers that the wireless was working.

“Time’s up!” the second officer shut his watch. “If we’re going to meet the Elbe, we should see her lights now.”

A cry from the point of the deck forward—light—a streaking flame in the sky ahead. The German liner Elbe was in sight! It answered the rockets of the Cumberland. The two ships raced on to each other.

The fast German mail steamer, Elbe—which every one knows was responding to an unexplained false call from the Wellington—took off the passengers from the burning Cumberland; and, as the crew of the Cumberland remained to fight the fire, the Elbe stood by till the Corinthian came back from its useless chase. As the Corinthian was a British ship of an allied line, it stayed with the Cumberland, and finally brought it into port after the fire had gutted the ship and burned out. Accordingly, the Elbe, with the Cumberland’s passengers, reached New York on Saturday afternoon, while the Corinthian was still at sea.

The arrest at New York of Roberta Leigh for her high crimes committed in England therefore was postponed till the Corinthian docked. But this arrest was meant to be only postponed. The British government, thoroughly aroused to the need of decisive and drastic measures for the suppression of the suffragist outrages, were determined to show no quarter. The crown officers waited doggedly for the coming of the Corinthian on Monday.

Wherefore, on Sunday night, Mr. Andrew Farnham called on Miss Roberta Leigh at the quiet country place of one of her classmates up the Hudson.

“Bobs,” he said, when he was alone with her, “the Britishers are in for bitter disappointment when the Corinthian gets to quarantine to-morrow. They’ve been oiling up the thumbscrews in the tower and sharpening the spikes of the Iron Maiden for you. When they find they haven’t got you, our recent acts of evasion will be kindergarten games compared to what may be required to keep you from being extradited. And, to confess the truth, dear, this having all but slaughtered a shipload of people has scared me. I don’t know what I’d find myself doing if they got after you again. So, just to protect me, won’t you marry me now? Come on; let’s become woman and husband!”

Roberta kissed him and laughed. “You didn’t really hurt any one. Everybody got off the Cumberland, and the Corinthian couldn’t have put out the fire even if it had come right away. I didn’t hurt anybody in England; and, as for their precious old property, I told my lawyer this morning to pay what was right for that.”

“You did that? Why?”

“I didn’t do those things for votes for women I’d never seen. I—I did them because you made me so mad, and I wanted to show you I didn’t care a thing about you.”

“Why?”

“Because I did—and thought you didn’t really care for me.”

“But now?”

“I know.”

“Then give me another kiss, Bobs. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you over the garden gate and you dared me. Why did you do that?”

“Because I knew I was going to love you, I guess, and tried to deny it.”

He held her close a long time, and their kisses no longer could be counted. “Dear, what a dangerous thing is the mating impulse!”

“Yes; if you try to deny it.”

“Then we’re stopping that right now, aren’t we?”

“Right now!”

Wherefore upon the passenger list of the steamer for Brazil which sailed from New York next morning appeared the names of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Farnham in the royal suite. By wireless, as they sailed out to sea, they heard of the horror of the British government at finding that the girl on the Corinthian was not Roberta Leigh, and that the very militant suffragette again had escaped.

But, in equal sense of outrage, the suffragist leaders in England received the news that Roberta Leigh had paid for all damage done by her in the name of the suffrage cause.

“We have long suspected,” the chief starver for the suffrage cause was quoted in the newspapers, “the sincerity of the suffragist support from the young women of America. Miss Leigh has proved by this weak reparation that her acts here were performed without sense of conviction. It is such as she who seem to justify, to the thoughtless, the charge that there is nothing new in principle in our attitude toward men. Her traitorous repairing of damage which we supposed was done in good faith will certainly cause us to be more certain of the sincerity and conviction of other recruits in our ranks before intrusting them with important acts of destruction. The rumored marriage of Miss Leigh is, under the circumstances, perfectly comprehensible, and only a final evidence of her defection.”

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 15, 1914 issue of The Popular Magazine.

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The Mating Impulse

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