Chapter 16

THE BEGINNING.

Schuyler came hurrying down the deck, Blake and Parks close behind. There was on his face the smile of great gladness. He placed one strong arm about his wife, the other about his child.

"I've some bully news for you, Kate, dear! The President has so arranged that I can complete my work and get back to you in less than a month. Isn't that splendid? Just one little month and I'll be back again with you and baby."

The child raised her head in protest.

"But I'm not a baby, now. I'm six years old. Mother has to pay full fare for me on the cars. Don't you, mother?"

Schuyler picked her up from the deck, tossing her in the air.

"No matter what you may be to conductors, you'll always be baby to daddy, you little darling," he said, brightly. Then, turning to Blake, with lightness born of great earnestness:

"Take good care of them while I'm gone, won't you, old man. By Jove, I'd like to chuck it all, even at the last minute as it is, and stay at home--"

Facing his wife, child and friend, his eyes were up the broad deck. Came toward him The Woman--The Woman known of The Man Who Knew, and of Young Parmalee. Schuyler's voice died in his throat. Her eyes were upon him. His eyes were upon her. She made no movement. She paused not in her indolent, sinuous walk. Her eyes were upon him; and that was all--dark eyes, glowing, inscrutable, beautiful with the beauty that was hers. And his eyes were on hers.... She turned up the narrow passageway in which lay Schuyler's stateroom.... Blake saw, too. He was not of those who live in the froth of things--that froth of things that is the scum. But he was of the world; and they who are of the world have knowledge of all that that world contains--of all, that is, that it is for such as they to know.

Kathryn looked up, at length, anxiously. Schuyler was never abstracted. She prompted:

"You were saying, Jack, dear--"

Schuyler drew his hand, palm out, across his forehead.

"Why--oh, yes," he floundered, trying to marshal his scattered thoughts. "I was saying--" He appealed to Blake, half-helplessly, half-whimsically. "By Jove, that's strange. What was I saying, Tom?"

Blake replied, shortly:

"You were asking me to take good care of them."

Schuyler nodded.

"Oh, yes," he assented. And then; "I don't understand. I--but you will take good care of them, won't you, old man? They're all I have; and more, they're all I want. Guard them, Tom, for me as though they were your own."

* * * * *

Waiting to take farewell of those one loves is indeed a sweetness tinged with bitterness. And if one loves very, very much, it is sometimes a bitterness tinged with sweetness. Kathryn, lower lip clenched between white teeth, herself unhappy would have kept that unhappiness as far as possible hers alone. There were those on board that she knew. To them she went; for there was still, since time was short, too much of it. Muriel she took with her.

Schuyler, in his eyes all the virile love that such as he feel for theirs, watched her vanish amid the throngs. Then, sauntering to the rail, leaned against it.... There came into his eyes a look of abstraction, of aberration, of puzzlement. Blake stood watching him-- stood for a long time, silent, unmoving.... At length he moved to Schuyler's side.

"Old man," he said, very slowly, very quietly, very earnestly; "old man, what's up?"

Schuyler turned, quickly

"What's up?" he repeated. "What do you mean?"

Blake said, still slowly:

"There's something happened to you."

"Happened," cried Schuyler. "Something happened?" He laughed. "What could have happened?"

"Damned if I know. But something has. I've got a hunch."

Schuyler answered, lightly:

"Well, you'd better take it to a doctor and have it diagnosed." He half turned. "It's only my natural nervousness at leaving Kathryn and Muriel-- and the importance of my mission. By the way," he asked, abruptly, "what was that crowd doing on the dock as I came up?"

Blake, selecting a cigarette, lighted it.

"Suicide," he said, curtly.

Schuyler started.

"You say it mighty cold-bloodedly," he asserted. "Where did it happen?"

"Here, I believe. Almost where we are standing."

"Good God! Who was it?"

"Young chap, named Parmalee."

"What? The boy who's been in the papers so much lately--who disgraced himself, and his people, for a woman?"

Blake nodded, and continued:

"Did you happen to notice the woman who passed a moment ago?--the one carrying the red roses?"

Schuyler bent his head.

"I noticed her," he replied, slowly. "What of her?"

"The woman."

"You don't mean Parmalee--?"

"Yes, I do."

"Because his love was not returned?"

"Because," replied Blake, smiling mirthlessly "it _was_ returned.... Did you ever read that! thing of Kipling's, _The Vampire_?"

"Why, yes, of course," returned Schuyler. "Almost everyone's read that."

"Do you remember how it goes?" persisted Blake.

Schuyler thought a moment. Then, slowly, he recited:

"A fool there was, and he made his prayer, (Even as you and I) To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair. We called her the woman who did not care. But the fool, he called her his Lady Fair--"

He broke off, abruptly. "A weird thing," he said, as though to himself. "I never thought much about what it meant before...." He turned, abruptly. "Why did you ask me if I'd read it?" he demanded.

"Well," said Blake, flicking the ashes from his cigarette, "there's the fool," he nodded toward the drying spot upon the deck. "And there," he indicated, with a backward toss of his well-shaped head, the corridor down which had passed the woman, "is his lady fair. I've even heard," he went on, "that she used to call him her 'fool,' quoting the poem. Pretty little conceit, eh?" His jaw, firm, square, set tight. Then, with a touch of deeper feeling. "She murdered that boy just as surely as if she had cut his throat; and the worst of it is that she can't be held legally guilty--morally, yes, guilty as sin; but legally--" He shook his head. "The laws that man makes for mankind are a joke."

"As sometimes seem," added Schuyler, slowly, "the laws that God makes for mankind.... If what you say about that woman be true, she ought to be taken by the hair of the head and dragged through the hell she has built for others." His brows were knitted; he was gazing with unseeing eyes upon the bustle and confusion of the dock below.

Blake, eyeing him, remarked quietly, but in tones more light:

"However, that's not your job, nor mine, thank God. It would be an eminently suitable recreation for a debonair young man with a shattered reputation, a cast iron stomach, several millions of dollars and no objections to staying up by the year." He turned a little, toward Schuyler. "What are you thinking about?" he queried.

"Only the fool."

"The generic fool of Kipling, or Young Parmalee?"

"I was thinking of Young Parmalee, then."

"And the woman?"

Schuyler quoted, slowly:

"A fool there was--"

"Oh, but," Blake protested, "I wouldn't call him a fool."

"Why not?" demanded Schuyler. "He was a fool."

"Yes," returned Blake. "But he's dead, now."

"Bosh," retorted Schuyler, impatiently. "I've no sympathy with that false sentiment that forbids one to speak the unpleasant truth of a dead person. If a man were a fool while alive, his dying doesn't absolve him of his folly. Young Parmalee's death was a mitigating circumstance, however. He killed himself; which shows that he had some manhood left. But he should have had the decency to choose another place for his self destruction." He was silent for a moment; at length he went on: "A man is what he is, and he was what he was. His dying can change nothing of his living."

He looked up. His wife and child were coming toward him.

"Say nothing to them about all this, Tom," he urged.

"Certainly not," acquiesced Blake.

A steward came down the deck, calling raucously:

"All ashore that's going ashore!"

Kathryn turned to Schuyler.

"And now that the time has really come to say good-bye," she said, brokenly, "here's something I brought you, Jack."

She handed him a little box of glazed cardboard. Wonderingly he took it.

"For me?" he cried, with simulated gaiety. "That's sweet of you, dear heart--sweeter, even than are these." For he had opened it, and taken forth the tiny bouquet of forget-me-nots that had nestled in the depths of the moist cotton, "and these are sweetness itself. But why forget-me- nots! As though I could ever forget you, even for one little minute!"

There came again the strident call:

"All ashore that's going ashor-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-e!!!" Violet eyes suffused, Kathryn was clinging to him.

"Jack," she whispered. "Jack, I'm afraid I'm--going--to--cry."

With infinite tenderness he held her to him.

"There, there, sweetheart mine," he said, soothingly. "Don't be a silly.... Now we'll all go down to the gangway, where the big hugs are.... Then I'll rush back here and we can wave one another good-bye and try to imagine I'm going only over to Staten Island for the afternoon."

Came farewells at the gangway--farewells of tears, of heart-aches, of quivering lips and moist lids--of laughter quavering and smiles unreal-- of the good hand clasp that good men know--the touch of wet, clinging lips.

Schuyler came rushing down the deck, keeping to that part of the ship that lay nearest to the dock. From the bouquet that had been given him, he plucked tiny, fragrant blossoms, casting them to those that had given, and with them sending cheery word of hope, tender word of parting.

He could see them there, far below, straining against the ropes, waving to him. He could see the violet eyes, tear laden, the lithe, slender, figure of his wife in the glory of her perfect womanhood--the sturdy little body of his child, barelegged, browned, hair tumbled, waving frantically a tiny little square of muslin and shouting farewells at the highest pitch of childish treble. He could see his friend--the friend such as few men may ever have, and, having, may pray to hold--broad shoulders protecting wife and child from the pressing throngs--he could hear his voice booming through all the heterogeneous medley of sound.

His voice choked. Words that he was crying--words lost in all the confusion of sound and movement--stuck in his throat. Moisture came to his eyes.... He turned a little.... Came into range of his vision a tiny streak of shifting crimson. He looked.

She was sitting there, on the deck--she--The Woman. She lay back in her chair, long, lithe limbs covered with a rug of crimson and black and dull, dull green. She was dangling gently, sensuously, the great cluster of scarlet roses that she held, now and again bringing them to where their fragrance would reach her delicately-chiseled nose, imperious, haughty.... They looked startlingly red against her cheek--like blood upon the snow.... She was looking at him.... There was no movement, save the even, languorous swing of the crimson blossoms. Lips, vivid red, were motionless, half parted in a little, inscrutable smile.... She was looking at him.... He forgot.... The whistle had been blowing, sounding departure. He had not heard. There was a lull. From afar, shrill, childish voice brought a drifting, "Bye, bye, daddy, dear!" ... He did not hear.... Her eyes were on his. His eyes were on hers.... And seemed to be nothing else....