Spanish Doubloons.

by Camilla Kenyon.

I

AN AUNT ERRANT

Never had life seemed more fair and smiling than at the moment when Aunt Jane's letter descended upon me like a bolt from the blue.

The fact is, I was taking a vacation from Aunt Jane. Being an orphan, I was supposed to be under Aunt Jane's wing, but this was the merest polite fiction, and I am sure that no hen with one chicken worries about it more than I did about Aunt Jane. I had spent the last three years, since Aunt Susan died and left Aunt Jane with all that money and no one to look after her but me, in s.n.a.t.c.hing her from the brink of disaster. Her most recent and narrow escape was from a velvet-tongued person of half her years who turned out to be a convict on parole. She had her hand-bag packed for the elopement when I confronted her with this unpleasant fact. When she came to she was bitter instead of grateful, and went about for weeks presenting a spectacle of blighted affections which was too much for the most self-approving conscience. So it ended with my packing her off to New York, where I wrote to her frequently and kindly, urging her not to mind me but to stay as long as she liked.

Meanwhile I came up to the ranch for a long holiday with Bess and the baby, a holiday which had already stretched itself out to Thanksgiving, and threatened to last until Christmas. People wrote alluringly from town, but what had town to offer compared with a saddle-horse to yourself, and a litter of collie pups to play with, and a baby just learning to walk? I even began to consider ranching as a career, and to picture myself striding over my broad acres in top-boots and corduroys.

As to Aunt Jane, my state of mind was fatuously calm. She was staying with cousins, who live in a suburb and are frightfully respectable. I was sure they numbered no convicts among their acquaintance, or indeed any one from whom Aunt Jane was likely to require rescuing. And if it came to a retired missionary I was perfectly willing.

But the cousins and their respectability are of the pa.s.sive order, whereas to manage Aunt Jane demands aggressive and continuous action. Hence the bolt from the blue above alluded to.

I was swinging tranquilly in the hammock, I remember, when Bess brought my letters and then hurried away because the baby had fallen down-stairs. Unwarned by the slightest premonitory thrill, I kept Aunt Jane's letter till the last and skimmed through all the others. I should be thankful, I suppose, that the peace soon to be so rudely shattered was prolonged for those few moments. I recalled afterward, but dimly, as though a gulf of ages yawned between, that I had been quite interested in six pages of prattle about the Patterson dance.

At last I came to Aunt Jane. I ripped open the envelope and drew out the letter--a fat one, but then Aunt Jane's letters are always fat. She says herself that she is of those whose souls flow freely forth in ink but are frozen by the cold eye of an unsympathetic listener. Nevertheless, as I spread out the close-filled pages I felt a mild wonder. Writing so large, so black, so staggering, so madly underlined, must indicate something above, even Aunt Jane's usual emotional level. Perhaps in sober truth there _was_ a missionary-experiment to "Find Capital after , or ;"

Twenty minutes later I staggered into Bess's room.

"Hush!" she said. "Don't wake the baby!"

"Baby or no baby," I whispered savagely, "I've got to have a time-table. I leave for the city tonight to catch the first steamer for Panama!"

Later, while the baby slumbered and I packed experiment to "Find Period in middle" explained. This was difficult; not that Bess is as a general thing obtuse, but because the picture of Aunt Jane embarking for some wild, lone isle of the Pacific as the head of a treasure-seeking expedition was enough to shake the strongest intellect. And yet, amid the welter of ink and eloquence which filled those fateful pages, there was the cold hard fact confronting you. Aunt Jane was going to look for buried treasure, in company with one Violet Higglesby-Browne, whom she sprung on you without the slightest explanation, as though alluding to the Queen of Sheba or the Siamese twins. By beginning at the end and reading backward--Aunt Jane's letters are usually most intelligible that way--you managed to piece together some explanation of this Miss Higglesby-Browne and her place in the scheme of things. It was through Miss Browne, whom she had met at a lecture upon Soul-Development, that Aunt Jane had come to realize her claims as an Individual upon the Cosmos, also to discover that she was by nature a woman of affairs with a talent for directing large enterprises, although _adverse influences_ had hitherto kept her from recognizing her powers. There was a dark significance in these italics, though whether they meant me or the family lawyer I was not sure.

Miss Higglesby-Browne, however, had a.s.sisted Aunt Jane to find herself, and as a consequence Aunt Jane, for the comparatively trifling outlay needful to finance the Harding-Browne expedition, would shortly be the richer by one-fourth of a vast treasure of Spanish doubloons. The knowledge of this h.o.a.rd was Miss Higglesby-Browne's alone. It had been revealed to her by a dying sailor in a London hospital, whither she had gone on a mission of kindness--you gathered that Miss Browne was precisely the sort to take advantage when people were helpless and unable to fly from her. Why the dying sailor chose to make Miss Browne the repository of his secret, I don't know--this still remains for me the unsolved mystery. But when the sailor closed his eyes the secret and the map--of course there was a map--had become Miss Higglesby-Browne's.

Miss Browne now had clear before her the road to fortune, but unfortunately it led across the sea and quite out of the route of steamer travel. Capital in excess of Miss Browne's resources was required. London proving cold before its great opportunity, Miss Browne had shaken off its dust and come to New York, where a mysteriously potent influence had guided her to Aunt Jane. Through Miss Browne's great organizing abilities, not to speak of those newly brought to light in Aunt Jane, a party of staunch comrades had been a.s.sembled, a steamer engaged to meet them at Panama, and it was ho, for the island in the blue Pacific main!

With this lyrical outburst Aunt Jane concluded the body of her letter. A small cramped post-script informed me that it was against Miss H.-B.'s wishes that she revealed their plans to any one, but that she did want to hear from me before they sailed from Panama, where a letter might reach her if I was prompt. However, if it did not she would try not to worry, for Miss Browne was very psychic, and she felt sure that any strong vibration from me would reach her via Miss B., and she was my always loving Jane Harding.

"And of course," I explained to Bess as I hurled things into my bags, "if a letter can reach her so can I. At least I must take the chance of it. What those people are up to I don't know--probably they mean to hold her for ransom and murder her outright if it is not forthcoming. Or perhaps some of them will marry her and share the spoils with Miss Higglesby-Browne. Anyway, I must get to Panama in time to save her."

"Or you might go along to the island," suggested Bess.

I paused to glare at her.

"Bess! And let them murder me too?"

"Or marry you--" cooed Bess.

One month later I was climbing out of a lumbering hack before the Tivoli hotel, which rises square and white and imposing on the low green height above the old Spanish city of Panama. In spite of the melting tropical heat there was a chill fear at my heart, the fear that Aunt Jane and her band of treasure-seekers had already departed on their quest. In that case I foresaw that whatever narrow margin of faith my fellow-voyagers on the _City of Quito_ had had in me would shrink to nothingness. I had been obliged to be so queer and clam-like about the whole extraordinary rendezvous--for how could I expose Aunt Jane's madness to the mult.i.tude?--that I felt it would take the actual bodily presence of my aunt to convince them that she was not a myth, or at least of the wrong s.e.x for aunts. To have traveled so far in the desperate hope of heading off Aunt Jane, only to be frustrated and to lose my character besides! It would be a stroke too much from fate, I told myself rebelliously, as I crossed the broad gallery and plunged into the cool dimness of the lobby in the wake of the bellboys who, discerning a helpless prey, had swooped en ma.s.se upon my bags.

"Miss Jane Harding?" repeated the clerk, and at the cool negation of his tone my heart gave a sickening downward swoop. "Miss Jane Harding and party have left the hotel!"

"For--for the island?" I gasped.

He raised his eyebrows. "Can't say, I'm sure." He gave me an appraising stare. Perhaps the woe in my face touched him, for he descended from the eminence of the hotel clerk where he dwelt apart sufficiently to add, "Is it important that you should see her?"

"I am her niece. I have come all the way from San Francisco expecting to join her here."

The clerk meditated, his shrewd eyes piercing the very secrets of my soul.

"She knew nothing about it," I hastened to add. "I intended it for a surprise."

This candor helped my cause. "Well," he said, "that explains her not leaving any word. As you are her niece, I suppose it will do no harm to tell you that Miss Harding and her party embarked this morning on the freighter _Rufus Smith_, and I think it very likely that the steamer has not left port. If you like I will send a man to the water-front with you and you may be able to go on board and have a talk with your aunt."

Did I thank him? I have often wondered when I waked up in the night. I have a vision of myself dashing out of the hotel, and then the hack that brought me is bearing me away. Bellboys hurled my bags in after me, and I threw them largess recklessly. Some arch-bellboy or other potentate had mounted to the seat beside the driver. Madly we clattered over cobbled ways. Out on the smooth waters of the roadstead lay ships great and small, ships with stripped masts and smokeless funnels, others with faint gray spirals wreathing upward from their stacks. Was one of these the _Rufus Smith_, and would I reach her--or him--before the thin gray feather became a thick black plume? I thought of my aunt at the mercy of these unknown adventurers with whom she had set forth, helpless as a little fat pigeon among hawks, and I felt, desperately, that I must reach her, must save her from them and bring her safe back to sh.o.r.e. How I was to do this at the eleventh hour plus about fifty-seven minutes as at present I hadn't considered. But experience had taught me that once in my clutches Aunt Jane would offer about as much resistance as a slightly melted wax doll. She gets so soft that you are almost afraid to touch her for fear of leaving dents.

So to get there, get there, get there, was the one prayer of my soul.

I got there, in a boat hastily commandeered by the hotel clerk's deputy. I suppose he thought me a belated pa.s.senger for the Rufus Smith, for my baggage followed me into the boat. "_p.r.o.nto_!" he shouted to the native boatman as we put off. "_p.r.o.nto_!" I urged at intervals, my eyes upon the funnels of the _Rufus Smith_, where the outpouring smoke was thickening alarmingly. We brought up under the side of the little steamer, and the wide surprised face of a Swedish deckhand stared down at us.

"Let me aboard! I must come aboard!" I cried.

Other faces appeared, then a rope-ladder. Somehow I was mounting it--a dizzy feat to which only the tumult of my emotions made me indifferent. Bare brawny arms of sailors clutched at me and drew me to the deck. There at once I was the center of a circle of speechless and astonished persons, all men but one.

"Well?" demanded a large breezy voice. "What's this mean? What do you want aboard my ship?"

I looked up at a red-faced man in a large straw hat.

"I want my aunt," I explained.

"Your aunt?" he roared. "Why the devil should you think I've got your aunt?"

"You have got her," I replied with firmness. "I don't see her, but she's here somewhere."

The captain of the _Rufus Smith_ shook two large red fists above his head.

"Another lunatic!" he shouted. "I'd as soon have a white horse and a minister aboard as to go to sea in a floating bedlam!"

As the captain's angry thunder died away came the small anxious voice of Aunt Jane.

"What's the matter? Oh, please tell me what's the matter!" she was saying as she edged her way into the group. In her severely cut khaki suit she looked like a plump little dumpling that had got into a sausage wrapping by mistake. Her eyes, round, pale, blinking a little in the tropical glare, roved over the circle until they lit on me. Right where she stood Aunt Jane petrified.

She endeavored to shriek, but achieved instead only a strangled wheeze. Her poor little chin dropped until it disappeared altogether in the folds of her plump neck, and she remained speechless, stricken, immobile as a wax figure in an exhibition.

"Aunt Jane," I said, "you must come right back to sh.o.r.e with me."

I spoke calmly, for unless you are perfectly calm with Aunt Jane you fl.u.s.ter her.

She replied only by a slight gobbling in her throat, but the other woman spoke in a loud voice, addressed not to me but to the universe in general.

"The Young Person is mad!" It was an unmistakably British intonation.

This then was Miss Violet Higglesby-Browne, I saw a grim, bony, stocky shape, in a companion costume to my aunt's. Around the edges of her cork helmet her short iron-gray hair visibly bristled.

She had a ma.s.sive head, and a seamed and rugged countenance which did its best to live down the humiliation of a ridiculous little nose with no bridge. By what prophetic irony she had been named Violet is the secret of those powers which seem to love a laugh at mankind's expense.