CHAPTER XIX.

IN PLEASANT SUMMER WEATHER.

“Who could think of storms and shipwrecks in an atmosphere like this?”

The sun was setting in a gorgeous bank of cloud that presaged weather fine and settled for days to come. Its last rays glowed on a vast expanse of ocean, calm and brilliantly blue. Sky and sea were alike at peace and beautiful.

“Yes, storms and shipwrecks seem idle dreams,” murmured Nina, again.

There was only one restless thing in the whole extent of the wide horizon,--the huge steamer cutting her way swiftly through the deep blue waves, and seeming in the silence that brooded over the waste of waters to be a living, sentient thing. In the quiet of this exquisite summer evening, her movements appeared unseemly. Ah, no, they were not! She had a reason. Every throb of her iron heart seemed to say, “Make haste, make haste, a day will come when the tiny, guileless waves lapping your sides will be transformed into raging, furious fiends, dashing themselves against your iron plates as if to wrest your living victims from you.”

Nina shuddered, and, extending her body seawards, looked down at the track of frothy white foam trailing out behind her; and at this moment when her thoughts were far away, when her eyes were trying to pierce the depths of the beautiful fickle element below, some one came softly behind her, and uttered the prosaic words, “Dinner is served, ma’am.”

“Thank you, I don’t care for any,” she observed, with a start; and the too attentive Merdyce crept disappointedly away.

Nina tried to resume her interrupted soliloquy, but the charm was broken. She cast a regretful glance at the sparkling sea, the rosy sky; then, turning, looked down a near skylight into the dining-saloon. Everybody was at dinner. The stewards, like kindly birds of prey, hovered over the long tables, then departing, wheeled and circled about the corners of the room, in their efforts to obtain fresh supplies of food for their hungry charges.

The _Merrimac_ was carrying several hundred people out to the high seas; many nationalities, many grades of society, were represented; and Captain Fordyce sat with keen, observant eyes bent on this last assemblage of precious souls committed to his care. He seemed lonely, and even though she wished no dinner, Nina reflected that she might go and bear him company.

“What are you grumbling to yourself?” she asked, jauntily, as she terminated a walk down the crowded room by slipping into a seat beside him.

He pushed away his soup plate without replying.

“Tell me, I wish to know,” she said, commandingly.

“It was a thought, and thoughts are sacred things.”

“A man should have no secrets from his wife,” she murmured, with a severity that she knew would be pleasing to him.

Thus admonished, he said, softly: “The sweetly uncertain manners of girlhood, and yet the self-possession of a duchess.”

“Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present,” we read in the _Rambler_; and the gift laid before the girl came from one who gave to few, and that not often. In secret delight she dropped her eyes beneath the eloquent glance that went even further than the words, and murmured something about a paradox.

He smiled, then said, in a low voice, “Do you know what this is?”

“This?” she said, nodding toward a salt-cellar upon which he had concentrated his attention. “Yes, certainly. I was taught at school,--a small vessel for holding the chloride of sodium, a substance used as--”

“Nina,” he said, fondly and under his breath, “don’t be provoking. You know what I mean. Your coming in here and sitting down beside me is a proclamation of the fact that you are my wife, my bride. See how those people are staring. They are probably saying: ‘Has that charming young creature fallen a prey to that sea-wolf?’”

Regardless of the curious glances, she frowned menacingly at him. Then, unheeding his request that she would stay and sensibly take her dinner with him, she got up and stole out of the room, not in the approved-of duchess fashion, but with the air of “a conscious simpleton, a bashful sneaksby.”

In the ladies’ cabin on deck she found a pretty, golden-haired child, to whom she made friendly advances, and with whom she played until a French maid appeared to carry it, reluctant and tearful, away to bed.

Then the people came up from dinner, and before Nina could escape she was pounced upon by an elderly maiden. The celerity with which travellers by sea become acquainted with each other is only equalled by the celerity with which they forget each other; and in an incredibly short space of time Nina had listened to a long and detailed account of a list of ills that a sea-voyage was supposed to cure. Sheer exhaustion at last forced her to stop, and Nina was free.

She found a quiet corner outside, and curling herself up in a deck-chair sat staring at the sky, and listening dreamily to the confused variety of sounds about her.

After the lapse of an hour the pangs of hunger assailed her. She sprang up, and in two minutes found herself in front of the steward’s pantry. The lord high steward himself, a very grand personage, seeing who it was, condescended to wait on her.

“I want a chicken,” she said, mildly. Then, by way of explanation, “I had no dinner,--and you may give me something to drink. What is in those bottles?” and she pointed to the wall where tiers on tiers of shelves rose above each other.

“Ale and porter, ma’am. We’ve got thousands of bottles, and they’ll all be gone before we get home. That’s saying nothing of the wines that’ll be drunk. Will you have one?”

“No, thank you.”

“The captain never touches a drop of these things, that is at sea,” said the man, with a comprehensive wave of his hand behind him. “From port to port he’s a strict T. T. That’s out of regard to the feelings of some of his passengers,--temperance folk.”

“Will you please give me that chicken?” said Nina.

“Shall I send it for you, ma’am?”

“No, I am going to carry it somewhere.”

He turned, spoke to a satellite, then handed her through the window a bird of moderate size on a very large plate.

“Do you think you can manage it?” he asked, anxious, and slightly surprised.

“Manage a chicken,” she murmured; “well, I should rather think so. Oh! please give me a napkin;” and putting the plate on the floor, she turned back.

He handed her one that she unfolded and carefully spread over the outstretched legs and wings of the defunct fowl. Then she began her progress down the passage.

The steward craned his neck out the window. “An odd little card! I wonder where she’s going.”

All went well with her until she approached a stairway that wound aggravatingly upward. There the chicken began to show signs of animation, wobbling about on the plate, and wildly kicking the napkin as if to dislodge it. Nina laughed; then, with eyes glued on her burden, tried to walk back steadily.

Some one came leaping down the stairs, and in her anxiety to avoid a collision she stepped aside too quickly. “Oh, my chicken!” she cried, sorrowfully staring at the empty plate in her hand.

“Alive or dead?” asked a laughing voice.

Nina looked up, and saw standing above her a sprightly, laughing boy.

“Alive,” she said; “it has taken to itself wings and flown away. It was in mortal terror of serving for my supper.”

“It went down that alley-way, didn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes, please ask that steward to go after it. And now I must go for another.”

“May I have the pleasure of carrying that plate for you?” asked her new friend, with sedate politeness.

She put it in his outstretched hand, and together they wended their way toward the pantry.

“Another chicken, please,” said Nina to the steward, who was still looking out. With a mystified air, he produced another, and Nina added, hastily, “And some crackers and a bottle of lemonade. I forgot them before.”

These latter things she took possession of herself, then turned away, her handsome, obsequious companion trotting after her.

“Not accustomed to such rapid exercise,” she heard murmured as she reached the outer air. He was leaning with languid grace against a cabin door, and she paused and observed contritely that she did not know how fast she was going.

“Oh, I don’t really care,” he said, with charming impudence. “I just wanted you to stop and speak to me. What a jolly night it is!”

She looked sharply at him. Yet his fresh, young face really was alight with wonder and admiration as he gazed up at the blue vault above them.

“Have you ever studied astronomy?” he asked.

“Yes,” she returned, guardedly, “I have a smattering of it.”

“Stars ought to be the best astronomers,” he went on, “for they have _studded_ the heavens since the world began.” Then walking across the deck, he stuck his knees in the bulwark, and, steadying the plate on the top of the rail, said: “Do you know the name of that constellation near the pole-star?”

“No,” she replied, regretfully, “I don’t.”

“It is Cassiopeia’s chair,” he said, gravely. “I wonder whether she found it comfortable. She was sphered at her death, you know. Neptune sent a great sea-serpent to ravage the kingdom of her husband, a king of Ethiopia, because she, naughty Cassiopeia, had had the presumption to declare herself fairer than the sea-nymphs. Astonishing, isn’t it, how vain women are?”

“I know what those two stars are,” said Nina, drawing her lemonade bottle from under her arm, and pointing it skywards, “Castor and Pollux, twin brothers, who, unlike any specimens of perfect youth we have nowadays, were so much attached to each other that Jupiter set them among the stars.”

“H’m, yes,” the boy replied. “I didn’t know that before. And so they are twins. They are certainly very much alike.”

Nina laughed, looked again at the luminous bodies that point by point resembled each other, until she heard a quick, “O malignant and ill-boding stars!”

His voice was deeply tragic now. Star-gazing had made him forget the chicken committed to his care; the plate had tipped; the fowl, hesitating not an instant, had taken a swift glide down the inclined plane into the ocean. For the second time Nina had lost her supper.

“What bad taste!” exclaimed the boy, gloomily. “You have such pretty teeth, and a shark--oh, horrors!” Then, rapidly, and in the same breath, he asked, “Why have fowls no future state?”

He waited an instant only for her answer, then rattled off: “Because they have their next world in this world,--necks twirled in this world. _Comprenez-vous?_ Now may I get you another?”

“Another what,--a conundrum or a chicken?”

“The latter,” he answered, soberly.

“What,--three chickens in one evening?” said Nina. “No, thank you. Think of the reputation for greediness you would put upon me. I shall content myself with the crackers and lemonade now, and that reminds me--I must go and eat them.”

“Where?” he asked, eagerly.

“In the chart-room.”

“That belongs to the captain, and are you travelling under his wing, too, Miss--Miss--I don’t know your name,” he added, suggestively.

“Miss Truecumtrotty,” said Nina, demurely.

“What a beautiful name! I suppose you are a schoolgirl whom he is taking home,” he said, with such waggish politeness, such inimitable drollery of tone and manner, that Nina was sorely tempted to forget her newly acquired dignity, to return to the days of her youth, and have a game of romps with this queer, delightful boy.

“He’s supposed to keep an eye on me, too,” he went on, with a shiver; “and by no means happy is this miserable little dolphin who sails in the huge, great shadow of a British whale; and I’m off for my health, too. I’m quite ill, though I don’t look it,” and his liquid eyes were raised wickedly and confidingly to her face.

“And won’t you say something against Captain Fordyce?” he went on, after a short pause; “do, just to comfort me. We’re in the same boat, you know. You are young and charming. So am I. If he keeps one down, he will the other. He told me to-day that I was not to go up on the bridge. Such impertinence! I’ll knock him down if he speaks that way to me again,--the old griffin!”

The boy was going too far. Nina gave him one sweeping, withering glance, vouchsafed him a rebuking, “Captain Fordyce is my husband. He could shake you all to pieces with one finger, you saucy little boy!” then she abruptly left him.

She would never speak to him again; and she must not put her foot on the bridge ladder till she became somewhat cooler. Her husband would want to know what had irritated her; so she paced slowly along the deck, stopping before every cabin door, and peering down every skylight she came to. The steady, subdued roar of the machinery possessed a curious charm for her. She would like to have explained to her the workings of those wonderful engines that day by day kept urging them onward.

“’Steban,” she said, precipitating herself into his presence, “I want to penetrate the innermost recesses of the ship to-morrow. You will take me, will you not?”

He sat stock-still. He was working out some problem, and not even for her would he interrupt it. She had to wait fully five minutes before he finished. Then he jumped up, and offered her the chair he had been sitting in.

“No, thank you,” she said, seizing the leg of a stool under the table, and dragging it out. “I want this. I am going to stay a little while,--that is, if you are not busy.”

“No, I am not busy,” he replied, quietly and contentedly, “I have just finished. What have you got in your arms?”

“Something to eat,” she said, briskly. “I am starving, and I want the cork taken out of this bottle, please.”

While she was watching him do it, there was a knock at the door. As she was nearest, she opened it. Her schoolboy friend stood before her, his cap in one hand, a small dish in the other.

“I have brought you some cold beef, Mrs. Fordyce,” he said, without raising his eyes, and with such affecting humility of manner that Nina bit her lip to keep from laughing. “There was nothing else,” he added, sadly; “the stewards say there has been an unusual run on the fowls this evening.”

Nina threw resentment to the winds, and gave him her sweetest smile of acknowledgment. “It was kind in you, very kind to trouble yourself about it.”

He raised his eyes, impudent and merry as ever, to her face. “I have brought only a little seasoning,” he said, meaningly, “only a scant supply of anything hot,--pepper, mustard, and the like. In some way or other I fancied you wouldn’t require much;” and, running down the steps, he disappeared.

“Who was that?” asked her husband, as she returned to her seat.

“A naughty, naughty boy, but very nice. I don’t know his name.”

“What is his age?” asked Captain Fordyce, jealously.

“Fifteen, I should say. He pretends to know you.”

“Oh, young Dacy,--he is only a child,” and he looked relieved.

“I met him when I was coming here with a chicken. I had a whole one in case you would like a piece. He came tumbling down-stairs and almost made me fall. Then we got talking.”

Her companion forgot to reply, in the absorbing attention he was giving her.

“Don’t sit there staring at me like--like a Dutch dog!” exclaimed Nina, throwing an infinitesimal bit of cracker at him. “It always makes me think you are trying to mesmerise me. Do something.”

He submissively took up a book.

“How stupid men are!” she ejaculated. “Don’t you see I am just in the humour for a talk? Put that book down this instant.”

He dropped it with a smile.

“You may smoke,” she observed, graciously; “I know you are dying for the permission.”

He reached behind him, and, taking down a pipe, carefully filled and lighted it.

“Nasty, detestable habit,” she said, with a cough; “do you know it is killing you by inches?”

He looked not a whit disturbed, and, after a careful review of his features, she said, jealously: “Other men have smoking-caps. You ought to have one. I wonder what would be most becoming to you: dark blue velvet, embroidered with red, or dark green, with yellow. I think the blue. What are you smiling at?”

He took his pipe out of his mouth long enough to say, “To see you practical again. You have had your head in the clouds all day.”

“It was a dream,” she said, “that set me off. I thought I was at home. Then it was so strange to wake up and find myself not in a large, cheerful apartment, but ‘cabined, cribbed, confined.’ The room, though the best on the ship, is still small enough and dark, too, for we were near the dock, weren’t we, and there were things against the windows. Then wandering about and seeing the preparations made for our departure was stranger still. ’Steban, what a tremendous mail came on board. I counted the bags. It was so queer to see the men carrying them on their shoulders, and dropping them down that hole under the floor in the dining-saloon. Then the passengers arrived,--what a motley crew!--some in rags, some in velvet gowns. I pitied the steerage people, some of them looked so ill. I gave my travelling rug to an old Irishwoman. I shall not need it, the weather is so warm.”

“You should not have done that,” he said, between his closed teeth. “Why did you not tell me about your Irish acquaintance? I would have given her a blanket,--a thing better suited to her condition in life than an expensive, fur-lined rug. And what will you do on chilly evenings?”

“I will take the blanket,” she said, menacingly. “Are you trying to scold me?”

“Yes,” he said, helplessly, “I am trying, but it is a dead failure. Whatever I may do in the future, now, at least, I could not utter a harsh word to you to save my life.”

“You never did scold me much,” she said, flatteringly. “You were only obstinate, and wouldn’t tell me things. You are better now, and I am sorry I was so thoughtless to-day.”

She was rambling about the room now in her usual restless fashion. The supper had been disposed of, and she was in search of some other entertainment. Her husband suddenly threw an arm around her as she passed him. Then she was placed on his knee, his pipe was laid on the table, and both her hands were grasped firmly in his.

Nina pouted visibly, for she saw that she was about to be favoured with one of his now frequent avowals of intense, repressed affection.

“I have not had you in my arms all day,” he murmured, with slow, passionate kisses. “You have taken no more notice of me than if I were a table or a chair. Of all disappointing, will-o’-the-wisp, elusive works of creation, commend me to a girl in her teens.”

“I have spoken to you six times, and made ten faces at you,” said Nina, reproachfully, and rolling her head from side to side on his broad breast to dodge an impending caress that came relentless, unavoidable as fate. “If you dare to kiss me again, I shall not speak to you for a week,” she said, warningly, as she struggled into a more dignified position; and he did not, although he muttered something grumblingly to the effect that she was a little bold, cruel thing.

Nina retired to a corner of the room, where she sat for some time evidently pondering some weighty matter. Suddenly she burst out with a remark: “’Steban, you are getting to be more obedient now. Why is it?”

“Possibly because you are better fitted to command.”

“I am just exactly what I used to be.”

“Pardon,--you are changing.”

“What do you think I am changing from?”

“A wayward bit of girlish obstinacy, fretting at the idea of being bound to me, to a woman in love with her fetters and the person to whom they bind her.”

“Your conceit is perfectly overcoming. I am just the same as ever. I am not in love with you. This--this feeling that has taken possession of me is one of profound gratitude.”

“Profound gratitude! Did gratitude make you wretched when you were at the Forrests?”

“That was only loneliness. I know that I have not fallen in love with you because--because--”

“Because what?”

“You will laugh at me.”

“No, I won’t,--honour bright.”

“Well,” she said, hanging her head, “it is because I have none of that feeling of delicious shyness that novels tell us should overpower us in the presence of the beloved one.”

Captain Fordyce, in spite of his promise, burst into a laugh.

“It is a proof,” she said, in an injured tone, “a sure proof. I can never feel that way with you. I cannot tremble at your footstep and blush when I look at you; therefore, I am not in love with you. I shall never be in love with any one.”

There was a half-revealed anxiety in her voice, and her husband stopped laughing. “Take into account the fact that I have been before you ever since the dawning of your intelligence,” he said, soberly. “You don’t want to blush before such a familiar object. The love that increases by degrees is so like friendship that it can never be violent, some one says.”

“It seems to me that the bloom was taken off my love affair,” said the girl, in a troubled voice.“ I wish I had not known you all my life.”

An unhappy frown settled on her husband’s brow; and he was muttering something about regret for having disturbed her girlish ideals, when she interrupted him.

“What a wretch I am to say such things! You have been so good to me all these years. I don’t believe there is another man in the world who would have put up with me. ’Steban, what makes me so capricious and unsettled?”

“What _made_ you?” he said, pointedly. “You are not now.”

“But I dare say I shall be again. You don’t understand me, ’Steban. I feel as if I belonged to quite a different race from you. You are more like dogs and horses and those things. You can always be depended on. I know one thing will make you angry and another will make you happy. While I,--why, a thing that charms me to-day may disgust me to-morrow, or it may charm me again. I can’t tell. Oh, dear, I wish I were a man!” and she wearily subsided.

“I don’t,” said her husband, with an amused chuckle; “your variableness is your greatest charm. Provided a woman has one or two solid essentials of character at bottom, all this change on the surface is but fascinating. Your wider range of feelings and emotions makes you more interesting than men. For instance,--to find you always a placid, smiling doll would bore me to death; but when I lay my fingers on the handle of my door I never know what I may find within. There may be a young tomboy climbing over the furniture; or an elderly young prude sitting stiffly, with a book in hand, who will draw herself up and look at me through imaginary spectacles when I speak to her; or there may be a fashionable young lady in high-heeled shoes and an elaborate gown, who will turn up her nose at my rough coat; or there may be a motherly young person, who will warn me against the perils of the pipe and the bottle; or there may be a demure young kitten, who will creep into my arms and let me fondle her to my heart’s content.”

Nina was listening in profound attention. “And which do you prefer?” she asked, when he finished.

“The last, I think, though all are well enough in their turn.”

“Well, there’s some queerness about men, too,” said Nina, taking up the cudgels for her sex.

“Far queerer than women, my dear, and with more of a strain of the brute. However, every woman, be she saint or angel, has in her a scrap of devilry.”

“’Steban!” she said, reproachfully.

“She has, birdie; latent or patent, it’s there all the same; and a man who undertakes to govern a woman without recognising that fact is an idiot.”

“Men don’t govern women. Women govern them.”

“Do they?” he said, amiably.

“You speak with authority,” she said, jealously. “You have always pretended that you didn’t know anything about any women but Mrs. Danvers and me.”

“You are a host in yourself.”

“You have had friendships, flirtations even,” she said, rebukingly; “and I have known nothing about them, and you have made me tell you every single thing that ever happened to me. Now I am ready to hear your adventures. Please begin.”