SCENE I

‘You are quite mistaken, I didn’t speak to him.’

‘That’s a lie! I saw you myself,--and I tell you, if you can’t behave yourself better than to go talking to a blackguard adventurer like that, you stay down here till this d----d voyage is over.’

The brutal voice, raised in anger, subsided into a sort of growl; the first, a woman’s, was silent.

‘Why don’t you answer? Curse it, d’you think it’s your “duty,”’ with a sneer, ‘to stand there like a mummy? By God, a mummy’s a fool to you!’ The man’s voice rose again in a harsh crescendo.

Dick Denver, leaning against the ship’s side, involuntarily took his cigar from his lips, and ground his teeth.

‘I judge domestic felicity has its shady side,’ he muttered, with a soul-satisfying drawl; ‘thank the Almighty for His infinite mercies!’--presumably referring to his own unencumbered condition.

‘Poor little woman, she looked very sweet at dinner. Gosh! _I_ was the blackguard adventurer!’ He laughed softly, and shrugged his shoulders.

‘What an everlasting brute the fellow is; that unfortunate woman must have considerable of a bad time. Ah! Well,--no affair of yours, Dick, my son.’

He turned, and from over the ship’s side watched the rings of smoke curling away from his cigar. A rustle as of silken garments caught his ear, and over his shoulder he saw a woman’s figure coming from the hatchway. Standing back in shadow, he watched her move listlessly towards a long deck chair, half-way between him and the hatch. He could catch a long-drawn sigh, half a sob, and see the shiver of the slight form as she sank into it. A whisper came floating along the deck to where he stood. ‘God! How I hate him! How I hate him! How long? How long?’

Dick Denver, vagabond, adventurer, gambler--what you will--was a man with a soft heart, and a curious hardened inability to witness distress without a desire to offer his help, which, owing to his manner of life, was generally found to be worse than useless. Watching her as she lay with profile half-turned from him, her chin resting dejectedly in her hand, the fair hair clustering low on her white forehead, and a pitiful droop in the corner of the little mouth,--he was conscious of a desire, gradually concentrating in the toe of his boot, to kick the originator of so much unhappiness. As he leant forward for a better look, a puff of wind caught the brim of his large felt hat, and blew it along the deck to the chair where she was sitting. Glad of the excuse, he moved towards her. She turned her head, and a gleam from the moon, half-hidden in the hurrying clouds, lit up a sweet pale face with deep grey eyes. A word of apology, and he bent forward to pick up his hat, catching a glimpse, as he did so, of a tear on her cheek. A great compassion smote his vagabond heart. He straightened himself and said:

‘Aren’t you cold, sitting up here so late?’

A soft musical voice was one of Mr Denver’s chief accomplishments; it was useful at poker, and was found attractive even by victims.

‘Oh! no, thank you; see, I have this shawl,’ pointing to a flimsy concoction of silk and lace that hung over the arm of the chair in a sufficiently useless way. Without a word he took it up, and with the deftest fingers--was not Mr Denver a dealer of the first water?--wrapped it round the shoulders and slender throat. A little smile, half surprise, half thanks, was his reward.

‘The dew’s very heavy in these seas. Guess my cigar’ll bother you?’

‘Oh, no, not in the least, thank you. Don’t throw it away,’ as Dick made a motion in that direction. Thankfully retaining it, he stretched his length on the next chair, and emitted silent but contented puffs.

An attractive length, sinewy but slight; under the shady hat a drawn, clean-cut, clean-shaven face, bronzed from original fairness to a deep tan; lazily veiled grey eyes, rather deep-set, and a firm mouth--all these things Dick turned to his companion, and spake in his most musical and least nasal voice. She listened with pleasure, but with an apparent and growing uneasiness, and with ear strained to catch the least sound of an approach from the cabin; and, in spite of the nonchalance of his voice and attitude, Mr Denver was no less on the strain than she; ‘for,’ thought he, ‘the powers forbid that I cause her to have more abuse from my friend below.’

The moon had burst through the clouds and was flooding the deck with silver light, and Dick improved the shining hour. The ship was bound for the West Indies; he discoursed of the islands and his own experiences there, and she listened, with an evident interest in spite of her fears. Never yet was woman (or man either, for the matter of that) uninterested when Dick Denver talked, which he did but seldom; his voice, as he might have phrased it himself, was ‘kind of seductive.’ Presently, however, he rose, and hat in hand, said:

‘You’ll pardon me, but I guess you’d better go down; your shawl’s quite wet.’

She rose with a little shiver, held out her hand without a word, and turning, went down the hatchway with the same listless, dejected step as before. Dick watched her go, pushed his hat high up on his head, and whistled softly and expressively; then he stooped suddenly, raising himself again with a handkerchief in his hand, the corners of which he examined with unscrupulous care till he read a name. Holding it softly in his hand, he pitched away the end of his cigar. Presently he began whistling again. Nobody ever heard Mr Denver whistle, except in moments of profound thought; evidently he was cogitating deeply. After a minute or two he took a pack of cards out of his pocket, and caressing them with his unoccupied hand, raised his head and voice, and spake to the moon with a meditative drawl:

‘’Pears I can feel kind of a sorrow for the animal!’ He then put the handkerchief in his breast-pocket and idled down the hatch. Dick Denver was always solitary in his habits, and made a point of a cabin to himself, otherwise his conduct that night with a small lace pocket-handkerchief might have been considered somewhat out of keeping with the character of a professional black sheep. It is impossible to disguise the fact that Mr Denver, in spite of his notorious insouciance, was an impressionable man.