A Rock in the Baltic. Barr Robert
to enjoy my dream, with just a little fear at the bottom of my heart that I shall suddenly wake up, rubbing my eyes, in the sewing room.”
Katherine pinched her.
“Now are you awake?”
Dorothy smiled, still dreaming.
“Hello!” cried Katherine, with renewed animation, “they’ve got the Secretary safe aboard the lugger, and they seem to be clearing the decks for action. Here is my dear Lieutenant returning; tall even among tall men. Look at him. He’s in a great hurry, yet so polite, and doesn’t want to bump against anybody. And now, Dorothy, don’t you be afraid. I shall prove a perfect model of diffidence. You will be proud of me when you learn with what timidity I pronounce prunes and prism. I think I must languish a little at him. I don’t know quite how it’s done, but in old English novels the girls always languished, and perhaps an Englishman expects a little languishment in his. I wonder if he comes of a noble family. If he doesn’t, I don’t think I’ll languish very much. Still, what matters the pomp of pageantry and pride of race—isn’t that the way the poem runs? I love our dear little Lieutenant for himself alone, and I think I will have just one dance with him, at least.”
Drummond had captured a camp-stool somewhere, and this he placed at right angles to the settee, so that he might face the two girls, and yet not interrupt their view. The sailor on guard once more faded away, and the band now struck up the music of the dance.
“Well,” cried Drummond cheerfully, “I’ve got everything settled. I’ve received the Secretary of the Navy: our captain is to dance with his wife, and the Secretary is Lady Angela’s partner. There they go!”
For a few minutes the young people watched the dance, then the Lieutenant said:
“Ladies, I am disappointed that you have not complimented our electrical display.”
“I am sure it’s very nice, indeed, and most ingenious,” declared Dorothy, speaking for the first time that evening to the officer, but Katherine, whose little foot was tapping the deck to the dance music, tossed her head, and declared nonchalantly that it was all very well as a British effort at illumination, but she begged the young man to remember that America was the home of electricity.
“Where would you have been if it were not for Edison?”
“I suppose,” said the Lieutenant cheerfully, “that we should have been where Moses was when the candle went out—in the dark.”
“You might have had torches,” said Dorothy. “My friend forgets she was wishing the sailors held torches on that suspended stairway up the ship’s side.”
“I meant electric torches—Edison torches, of course.”
Katherine was displeased at the outlook. She was extremely fond of dancing, and here this complacent young man had planted himself down on a camp stool to talk of electricity.
“Miss Kempt, I am sorry that you are disappointed at our display. Your slight upon British electrical engineering leaves us unscathed, because this has been done by a foreign mechanic, whom I wish to present to you.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Katherine, rather in the usual tone of her elder sister. “I don’t dance with mechanics, thank you.”
She emphasized the light fantastic word, but the Lieutenant did not take the hint; he merely laughed again in an exasperatingly good-natured way, and said:
“Lady Angela is going to be Jack Lamont’s partner for the next waltz.”
“Oh,” said Katherine loftily, “Lady Angela may dance with any blacksmith that pleases her, but I don’t. I’m taking it for granted that Jack Lamont is your electrical tinsmith.”
“Yes, he is, and I think him by all odds the finest fellow aboard this ship. It’s quite likely you have read about his sister. She is a year older than Jack, very beautiful, cultured, everything that a grande dame should be, yet she has given away her huge estate to the peasantry, and works with them in the fields, living as they do, and faring as they do. There was an article about her in one of the French reviews not long ago. She is called the Princess Natalia.”
“The Princess Natalia!” echoed Katherine, turning her face toward the young man. “How can Princess Natalia be a sister of Jack Lamont? Did she marry some old prince, and take to the fields in disgust?”
“Oh, no; Jack Lamont is a Russian. He is called Prince Ivan Lermontoff when he’s at home, but we call him Jack Lamont for short. He’s going to help me on the Russian business I told you of.”
“What Russian business?” asked Katherine. “I don’t remember your speaking of it.”
Dorothy went white, edged a little way from her friend, while her widening eyes flashed a warning at the Lieutenant, who, too late, remembered that this conversation on Russia had taken place during the walk from the bank. The young man coughed slightly behind his open hand, reddened, and stammered:
“Oh, I thought I had told you. Didn’t I mention the prince to you as we were coming here?”
“Not that I recollect,” said Katherine. “Is he a real, genuine prince? A right down regular, regular, regular royal prince?”
“I don’t know about the royalty, but he’s a prince in good standing in his own land, and he is also an excellent blacksmith.” The Lieutenant chuckled a little. “He and his sister have both been touched a good deal by Tolstoian doctrine. Jack is the most wonderful inventor, I think, that is at present on the earth, Edison notwithstanding. Why, he is just now engaged on a scheme by which he can float houses from the mountains here down to New York. Float them—pipe-line them would perhaps be a better term. You know they have pipe-lines to carry petroleum. Very well; Jack has a solution that dissolves stone as white sugar dissolves in tea, and he believes he can run the fluid from the quarries to where building is going on. It seems that he then puts this liquid into molds, and there you have the stone again. I don’t understand the process myself, but Jack tells me it’s marvelously cheap, and marvelously effective. He picked up the idea from nature one time when he and I were on our vacation at Detroit.”
“Detroit, Michigan?”
“The Detroit River.”
“Well, that runs between Michigan and Canada.”
“No, no, this is in France. I believe the real name of the river is the Tarn. There’s a gorge called Detroit—the strait, you know. Wonderful place—tremendous chasm. You go down in a boat, and all the tributary rivers pour into the main stream like jets from the nozzle of a hose. They tell me this is caused by the rain percolating through the dead leaves on the surface of the ground far above, and thus the water becomes saturated with carbonic acid gas, and so dissolves the limestone until the granite is reached, and the granite forms the bed of these underground rivers. It all seemed to me very wonderful, but it struck Jack on his scientific side, and he has been experimenting ever since. He says he’ll be able to build a city with a hose next year.”
“Where does he live?”
“On the cruiser just at present. I was instrumental in getting him signed on as John Lamont, and he passed without question. No wonder, for he has scientific degrees from all sorts of German universities, from Oxford, and one or two institutions in the States. When at home he lives in St. Petersburg.”
“Has he a palace there?”
Drummond laughed.
“He’s got a blacksmith shop, with two rooms above, and I’m going to stop with him for a few months as soon as I get my leave. When the cruiser reaches England we pay off, and I expect to have nothing to do for six months, so Jack and I will make for St. Petersburg.”
“Why do you call him Lamont? Is it taken from his real name of what-d’ye-call-it-off?”
“Lermontoff? Yes. The Czar Demetrius, some time about the beginning of the seventeenth century, established a Scottish Guard, just as Louis XI did in France two hundred years before, and there came over from Scotland Lamonts, Carmichaels, Buchanans and others, on whom were bestowed titles and estates. Prince