CHAPTER V.

FELLOW SHIPS ON THE SEA OF LIFE.

Some hours passed, but Nina lay quiet and motionless. She had taken her troubles to dreamland; and, in a motley company, she sauntered through its pleasant shades until a shrill whistle from the deck pierced her sleepy brain and caused her to spring nervously to her feet.

She had been asleep. Well, she felt better for it. How delicious was the salt air! and she put her face to the port-hole. Now there was nothing but “water, water all around,” and, as the other line of the quotation came into her mind, she reflected that it was her supper-time, and that the strong sea air had made her fearfully and wonderfully hungry and thirsty. Should she reconnoitre? No, she would certainly lose her way in the labyrinth of passages. ’Steban would surely come to her rescue.

Simultaneously with the ringing of a bell there was a knock at her door.

She opened it and smiled as a fat stewardess gasped out the words, “Captain Fordyce wants to know--won’t you have--some dinner?”

“Won’t you sit down?” said the girl, hospitably. “Yes, I guess I’ll have some dinner. Isn’t it pretty late for it?”

“I reckon you’re from the country,” said the stewardess, dropping like a stone on the couch, that gave a low groan at her contact. “We don’t have supper till nine. Lunch is in the middle o’ the day.”

“Indeed,” said Nina, quietly.

“I hope you find everythin’ comfortable,” said the woman, gazing approvingly at the frank, pretty face bent on her. “It’s a blessing you ain’t goin’ to be sick. I see you with the capting. He don’t gen’rally bother with passengers. P’raps he knows your fam’ly.”

From Nina’s earliest recollection Captain Fordyce had been a forbidden subject of conversation; and she had been strictly warned not to mention his name outside her own home, so she responded, vaguely, that he was an old friend of her parents.

“He keeps--mostly to himself,” panted the stewardess. “He’s an odd man--is the capting. Kind of grouchy and queer. I guess he’s led a tough life. Hard work, few friends, little play. Do you fancy him, miss?”

“No,” Said Nina, rashly.

“No more did I at first,” said the woman, sympathetically. “It’ll come to you, miss. He’s got a soft spot under his hard shell. Many’s the good deed he does. The men all like him, though he’s a bit hard at first. I heard the second officer--he’s new to the ship--tell the doctor that he’s a reg’lar martin--martin--”

“Martinet,” suggested Nina.

“That’s it, miss, but I say it takes all kind o’ folks to make a world; and if the capting hasn’t got his lips smeared with honey, he knows fine how to work a ship. Come on, my dear young lady. The capting’ll think you’re not a-coming,” and she shuffled down a passage leading to the long, low dining-saloon.

She paused in the doorway, and Nina gave a quick sigh of appreciation. This saloon was infinitely more homelike than the huge hotel dining-room. The windows were all open to the evening air. Cheerful sunbeams streamed through them, lighted up the crimson-covered furniture, the snowy tables, and rejoiced the hearts of a number of yellow-throated canaries, who poured forth a continuous warble from cages half hidden in a bank of green ferns.

At the head of the table nearest the doorway sat a man in a black and gold uniform. The stewardess pointed to him. “Your seat is there, miss, next the capting.”

At the sound of her voice Captain Fordyce turned, and, seeing his young wife, rose and extended a hand. “Ah! here you are. I was afraid you had succumbed to seasickness.” Then twirling around a chair next his own, he said: “This is your place.”

His manner was conventional, and overcome by it and the uniform, that was quite a new thing to her, Nina subsided into her seat with a pretty blushing stare; then, dropping her eyes, looked at the dainty buttonhole bouquet in the centre of her elaborately folded napkin. The rosebud and sprig of heliotrope seemed like old friends blown her from the garden at home, and, gently putting them to her face, she looked around to see what the other ladies were doing with theirs. They were fastening them in their dresses. She imitated them, then taking up the menu beside her plate she read in bewilderment its comprehensive contents.

The tall steward standing behind her chair breathed a soft little sigh; thus admonished of her duty, she hastily found the soups, and, running her eye over the different kinds, said, “Tomato.”

In a trice he reappeared with it. As she picked up her spoon Captain Fordyce said, inquiringly:

“So you are not going to be ill?”

“I have been ill, dreadfully ill,” said the girl, innocently, “but I have got quite over it now.”

“And we are just three hours out of port,” he remarked, in a quiet, amused fashion. “Allow me to congratulate you on the celerity with which you have vanquished the foe to enjoyment of life at sea. I hope my other passengers may be equally fortunate.”

Not feeling inclined for conversation, Nina let this remark pass. Captain Fordyce looked away from her down the crowded tables, then said to a lady on his left hand, “You asked about the weather, Mrs. Grayley. I prophesy that there won’t be a score of people at these tables to-morrow.”

She uttered a disturbed exclamation. “Are we going to have it rough?”

He gave her a curtly polite, “Yes.” It was not his habit to talk much. He preferred to listen. This she seemed to divine, and forthwith poured out an animated stream of babble on the probability of their having bad weather during their voyage to England.

For several courses Nina was left to herself, and occupied the time by studying the passenger list and making a careful examination of the faces about her. She avoided the head of the table. The features of the man sitting there were as well-known to her as her own, although this evening his uniform did seem to give him a strange unfamiliarity of aspect.

The lady to whom he was talking looked forty or thereabout, though she was chattering in a babyish way that Nina, in spite of her youth, could scarcely emulate. Her face was unattractive,--a combination of faded beauty and silliness; but one only and beautiful charm she possessed, namely, her hands. They were wonderfully white and pretty, and she made them do extra duty by keeping her elbows on the table the greater part of the time.

Nina’s eyes wandered from Mrs. Grayley to her neighbour, a tall, plain-featured man whose benevolent blue eyes chastened the warlike aspect of his immense blond moustache and aquiline nose. Under his right eyebrow was a gold-rimmed glass; and while she covered it with a prolonged stare, she gathered from his conversation that he was an officer in an English regiment, and that he had been making a tour of the principal American cities.

Suddenly he met her glance, and, wrinkling his forehead, let his glass fall with a click on the shiny buttons of his coat, with the effect of making her start slightly. As he was looking at her, her occupation in his direction was gone; so she glanced cautiously at his left-hand neighbour, who had not yet got beyond the entrées, and was obstinately demanding something that the menu did not contain, and yet that he thought he had discovered there.

Nina in awed wonderment gazed at the expanse of red throat presented, as the determined man twisted his head to remonstrate with the steward. This was a real live English knight, Sir Hervey Forrest. She should be quite frightened of him. He had a round, thick head, bristling gray hairs, pompous figure, and overpowering manner. Surely he should have had the chief seat at the table,--he and his wife, the gray, smooth, elegant, distinguished little mouse beside him, who rarely opened her mouth, except to put food in it in the daintiest way possible. Their names headed the passenger list at least, and Nina was just reading them over again, when a growl from the knight caught her attention.

He had come off second best in the dispute with the steward, and was now addressing her husband. “You, sir,--you ought to have your bills of fare printed. Your passengers, sir, get lost in this maze of writing.”

Nina trembled, and gazed apprehensively at Captain Fordyce, who was coolly surveying the inflamed face turned toward him.

“We don’t carry a printing-press, sir. The company has expense enough in other ways.”

“Haven’t you got a typewriter, sir? Haven’t you got a typewriter?” spluttered the disturbed man.

“I believe we have,” returned Captain Fordyce. “Merdyce,” and he addressed his own servant who stood behind his chair, “ask the chief steward to have Sir Hervey Forrest’s menu typewritten to-morrow.”

The knight was enraged. He had attained to his present high position from a comparatively low origin. There were enough jokes at his expense floating about now to keep him in constant irritation. In addition, the impression would get out that he could only decipher the most legible handwriting. “I don’t want a menu typewritten for me alone, sir,” he stammered; “have them done for all the passengers.”

Captain Fordyce, usually impatient and scornful with bickering, faultfinding passengers, was now intensely entertained, owing to the fact that Miss Brighteyes was hanging on his every word and look, and was breathlessly watching every turn of the dispute.

“Only as they request them, Sir Hervey,” he said, good-naturedly. “Do I understand you to say you revoke your request?”

Lady Forrest murmured something in a low voice to her choleric spouse, and he flung himself over his plate. “Let it go, sir, let it go. Your menu is a slovenly thing, but I prefer it as it is.”

“Merdyce,” said Captain Fordyce, turning to his servant with an imperturbable air, “do not tell the chief steward to typewrite a menu for Sir Hervey Forrest to-morrow.”

Nina exchanged a smile with her husband, then stole a quiet glance across the vacant chair on her right hand. Beyond the chair sat a young man; and she was quite well aware of the fact that, while she had been taken up with a survey of the other people at the table, he had been throwing her a number of scrutinising glances across the red plush seat. Now she looked stealthily at him. Heretofore her acquaintance with men had been extremely limited. In _les affaires du coeur_ she would prove a formidable rival to Molière’s Agnes, but that had not prevented her from forming several theories with regard to the stronger sex. They had no right to be as handsome as women, that she firmly believed; yet, notwithstanding her preconceived opinion, a feeling of admiration stole over her as she surveyed the manly beauty of the tall, graceful form next her; and she half-impatiently acknowledged to herself that he eclipsed by far the most beautiful woman that she had ever seen.

His eyelids’ “black and silken fringe” was drooping on the “vermil tinge” of his cheek, as he gazed thoughtfully at his plate. Something pleasing must be passing through his mind, for soon he smiled faintly, and she caught a glimpse of glittering white teeth through the heavy black of his moustache. He had the full, distinct, and well-proportioned lips that, according to Lavater, designate a character hostile to falsehood, villainy, and baseness, but with a propensity to pleasure!

The infatuating nature of the science of physiognomy had led the girl to study intently a Lavater that she one day found among some old books belonging to Mrs. Danvers. Accordingly, she pieced out for her neighbour a character that she hoped she might have the satisfaction of finding to be correct. He was not wanting in the perpendicular incisions between the eyebrows that evidenced strength of mind, nor in the energy-portending black eyes. His horizontal eyebrows denoted a masculine and vigorous character, and the broad, square forehead, a strong memory.

She was just trying to decide whether his chin meant coolness of temper or extreme good nature, when she heard, in a dry tone, “A penny for your thoughts.”

She looked up and found that Captain Fordyce’s deep, dark-pupilled eyes were turned on her with an expression almost of displeasure.

“I have asked you twice for the walnuts,” he went on, “yet you dream away as if you were alone in a desert.”

“So I am alone in a dessert,” she said, mischievously, as she put the dish within his reach.

He shook his head at her, then applied himself to his nuts. Nina tried to be less absent-minded, but she took no part in the animated conversation kept up by the most of the passengers. She did not scrutinise any more of them. Their number bewildered her. She would attack the remainder to-morrow; and there was another wave of homesickness passing over her. She dropped the bunch of raisins she had just taken, threw down her napkin, and left the table.

While she was hurriedly trying to find her way to her room, she heard a step behind her, and a remark in her husband’s deep voice: “I am on my way to see the other young lady that I have in charge. She is ill already, but I think I can persuade her to spend the evening in the chart-room. I have some writing to do. Perhaps you will come and help me entertain her. It will be pleasanter for you than sitting alone or among all these strangers.”

“I--I don’t think I would do her any good,” stammered Nina, plaintively.

“What about misery and company?”

She reluctantly made a gesture of consent, and Captain Fordyce continued, “Let us go to ninety-three and get a wrap, so you may have a walk before going to bed.”

“I thought you didn’t like red,” observed Nina, coldly, when he stepped out of her room holding a brilliant-hued cloak.

“For a wrap, yes,” he remarked, folding it over his arm. “It is just the thing for youth and beauty, and gives a glow to your travelling frock. It also reminds me of Rubicon Meadows,--you remember you used to wear it there?”

Yes, she remembered it; but she made no reply, and silently followed him up a companionway, and past the deck-cabins to a little room just under the bridge. It was a tiny place, but exceedingly cosy. Crimson curtains hung before the door and the two small windows; the walls were lined with mirrors, pictures, and different kinds of nautical instruments that to Nina’s inexperienced eyes looked like mouse-traps. A large lamp covered by a rose shade shed a soft, subdued light over everything.

“How delightfully comfortable!” she exclaimed, her displeasure suddenly leaving her.

Captain Fordyce pulled forward an armchair, and with a pleased smile ran down the steps to the deck. Presently he came back. “Miss Marsden is horribly sick, and hopes we may all go to the bottom before morning.”

“Poor girl!” said Nina, compassionately. “Can I do anything for her?”

“No; she has her maid and the stewardess.”

“A maid--all to herself?”

“Yes, she has plenty of money.”

“Where does she come from?”

“Boston.”

“What is she going to England for?”

“Love-sickness,--to cure it. Her mother told me that she had been jilted. She is going to visit relatives in London.”

“What a mean man!” exclaimed Nina. Then she added, sentimentally, “She will forget him,

“‘For love fares hardly on ingratitude; And love dies quickly nurtured by deceit; And love turns hatred captured by a cheat.’”

Captain Fordyce listened in an attention so fascinated and so flattering that Nina thought well to turn his thoughts in another direction, and therefore asked, shrewdly, “Was that nobleman mad because he couldn’t sit by you at dinner?”

“I guess he was, Miss New England,” said her husband, with a sigh, “but he is not a nobleman.”

“He has a title.”

“He was knighted on the occasion of some royal celebration. He was a mayor of a Cheshire city at the time,--made his money in coal.”

“Isn’t he a bloated aristocrat?”

“No.”

“Then if he is only bloated without the aristocrat I sha’n’t be afraid of him. Why didn’t you let him sit beside you?”

“Because he didn’t apply in time. Those that get their names in first get the best seats. I am not going to have exceptions made for Sir Hervey Forrest or any other person.”

“I didn’t apply for my seat.”

“I was looking out for you.”

“It is good for every woman to have some man to attend to business matters for her,” said the girl, sententiously.

“Is that the only path of usefulness you would lay out for mankind?”

“Oh, no,” she replied, carelessly, “they can carry parcels, and get you through a crowd, and not talk foolishness when you want silence. Where did that bloater get his nice little gray herring?”

“If you mean Lady Forrest, she was a milliner’s pretty apprentice, I believe, in her early days. She seems a ladylike woman, though, more ballast than he has.”

“That is a very beautiful young man next me,” said Nina, earnestly. “Do you know who he is?”

“No; don’t want to. A regular tailor’s figure.”

“What is his name?”

“Delessert; now please stop your charming gabble and let me work,” and, whirling around his chair toward the table, he occupied himself in scribbling queer figures like hieroglyphics, the meaning of which Nina was unable to determine. She leaned back on her cushions and indulged in sweet idleness. Presently Captain Fordyce’s gold-rimmed cap caught her dreamy, wandering eye. To glance from it to its owner was a natural thing. She lazily surveyed his face through her half-shut eyelids. What an air of command he carried. If she were a sailor she would be afraid to disobey the slightest order coming from that determined mouth; but, not being a sailor,--she laughed so distinctly that she feared he heard her. But he did not. His mind was fully taken up with his writing, and, seeing this, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to a retrospect of the exciting and fatiguing events of the last two days.