The Consul | Page 7

carry my own doctor, and if
he won't give us a clean bill of health, I'll make him walk the plank. At
eight, then, at dinner. I'll send the cutter for you. I can't give you a
salute, Mr. Consul, but you shall have all the side boys I can muster."
Those from the yacht parted from their consul in the most friendly
spirit.
"I think he's charming!" exclaimed Miss Cairns. "And did you notice
his novels? They were in every language. It must be terribly lonely
down here, for a man like that."
"He's the first of our consuls we've met on this trip," growled her father,
"that we've caught sober."
"Sober!" exclaimed his wife indignantly.
"He's one of the Marshalls of Vermont. I asked him."
"I wonder," mused Hanley, "how much the place is worth? Hamilton,
one of the new senators, has been deviling the life out of me to send his
son somewhere. Says if he stays in Washington he'll disgrace the
family. I should think this place would drive any man to drink himself
to death in three months, and young Hamilton, from what I've seen of
him, ought to be able to do it in a week. That would leave the place
open for the next man."
"There's a postmaster in my State thinks he carried it." The senator
smiled grimly. "He has consumption, and wants us to give him a
consulship in the tropics. I'll tell him I've seen Porto Banos, and that it's
just the place for him."
The senator's pleasantry was not well received. But Miss Cairns alone
had the temerity to speak of what the others were thinking.
"What would become of Mr. Marshall?" she asked. The senator smiled
tolerantly.
"I don't know that I was thinking of Mr. Marshall," he said. "I can't
recall anything he has done for this administration. You see, Miss
Cairns," he explained, in the tone of one addressing a small child,
"Marshall has been abroad now for forty years, at the expense of the

taxpayers. Some of us think men who have lived that long on their
fellow-countrymen had better come home and get to work."
Livingstone nodded solemnly in assent. He did not wish a post abroad
at the expense of the taxpayers. He was willing to pay for it. And then,
with "ex-Minister" on his visiting cards, and a sense of duty well
performed, for the rest of his life he could join the other expatriates in
Paris.
Just before dinner, the cruiser RALEIGH having discovered the
whereabouts of the SERAPIS by wireless, entered the harbor, and
Admiral Hardy came to the yacht to call upon the senator, in whose
behalf he had been scouring the Caribbean Seas. Having paid his
respects to that personage, the admiral fell boisterously upon Marshall.
The two old gentlemen were friends of many years. They had met,
officially and unofficially, in many strange parts of the world. To each
the chance reunion was a piece of tremendous good fortune. And
throughout dinner the guests of Livingstone, already bored with each
other, found in them and their talk of former days new and delightful
entertainment. So much so that when, Marshall having assured them
that the local quarantine regulations did not extend to a yacht, the men
departed for Las Bocas, the women insisted that he and admiral remain
behind.
It was for Marshall a wondrous evening. To foregather with his old
friend whom he had known since Hardy was a mad midshipman, to sit
at the feet of his own charming countrywomen, to listen to their soft,
modulated laughter, to note how quickly they saw that to him the
evening was a great event, and with what tact each contributed to make
it the more memorable; all served to wipe out the months of bitter
loneliness, the stigma of failure, the sense of undeserved neglect. In the
moonlight, on the cool quarter- deck, they sat, in a half-circle, each of
the two friends telling tales out of school, tales of which the other was
the hero or the victim, "inside" stories of great occasions, ceremonies,
bombardments, unrecorded "shirt-sleeve" diplomacy.
Hardy had helped to open the Suez Canal. Marshall had assisted the
Queen of Madagascar to escape from the French invaders. On the
Barbary Coast Hardy had chased pirates. In Edinburgh Marshall had
played chess with Carlyle. He had seen Paris in mourning in the days of
the siege, Paris in terror in the days of the Commune; he had known

Garibaldi, Gambetta, the younger Dumas, the creator of Pickwick.
"Do you remember that time in Tangier," the admiral urged, when I
was a midshipman, and got into the bashaw's harem?"
"Do you remember how I got you out? Marshall replied grimly.
"And," demanded Hardy, "do you remember when Adelina