Chapter 4

"Why indefinite?"

"Since it is to last until I belie my better judgment and basely recant my opinion as to your looks."

"You were nearly caught while we were discussing our protégé. Well, go on."

"I think you'd best tell me a little about yourself."

"Oh, my life is dull compared with yours," she returned. "Our only interesting problem has been a barn-storming of the doors of New York Society."

"And did you break in?"

For a moment her eyes opened wide. Then she remembered his confessed ignorance and laughed.

With such reservations as she deemed advisable, she sketched briefly for him one of those amazing careers so typical of the swiftly changing social conditions of America.

As she talked, he visualized her father, keen, restless, resolute, a money-hunter, who had bred out of a few dollars many dollars, and out of many dollars an overwhelming fortune; her mother, a woman of clean, fine, shrewd, able New England stock (the Tyro, being of the old America, knew the name at once); and the daughter, born to moderate means, in the Middle West, raised luxuriously on the basis of waxing wealth, educated abroad and in America in a school which shields its pupils from every reality of life and forces their growth in a hothouse atmosphere specially adapted to these human orchids, and then presented as a finished product for the acceptance of the New York circle which, by virtue of much painful and expensive advertising in the newspapers, calls itself Society.

Part of this she told him, qualifying the grossness of the reality by her own shrewd humor; part he read between the lines of the autobiography.

What she did not reveal to him was that she was the most flattered and pampered heiress of the season; courted by the great and shining ones, fawned on by the lesser members of the charmed circle, the pet and plaything of the Sunday newspapers--and somewhat bored by it all.

The siege of society had been of farcical ease. Not her prospective millions nor her conquering loveliness, either of which might eventually have gained the entrée for her, would have sufficed to set her on the throne. Shrewd social critics ascribed her effortless success to what Lord Guenn called her "You-be-d----d" air.

The fact is, there was enough of her New England mother in Cecily to keep her chin up. She never fawned. She never truckled. She was direct and honest, and free from taint of snobbery, and a society perhaps the most restlessly, self-distrustfully snobbish in the world marveled and admired and accepted. Gay, high-spirited, kind in her somewhat thoughtless way, clever, independent of thought and standard, with a certain sweet and wistful vigor of personality, Cecily Wayne ruled, almost as soon as she entered; ruled--and was lonely.

For the Puritan in her demanded something more than her own circle gave her. And, true to the Puritan character, she wanted her price. That price was happiness. Hence she had fled from Remsen Van Dam.

"But what's become of your promenade deck court?" inquired the Tyro, when he found his attempts to elicit any further light upon her character or career ineffective.

"Scattered," she laughed. "I told them I wouldn't be up until after luncheon. Aren't you flattered?"

"I'm grateful," he said. "But don't forget that we have to call on Karl at four o'clock."

"Well, come and rescue me then from the 'court,' as you call it. Now I must make myself pretty--I mean less homely--for luncheon."

Leaden clogs held back the hands of the Tyro's watch after luncheon. Full half an hour before the appointed time he was on deck, a forehandedness which was like to have proved his undoing, for Judge Enderby, who had taken a fancy to the young man and was moreover amused by the incipient romance, swooped down upon him and inveigled him into a walk. Some five minutes before the hour, the Joyous Vision appeared, and made for her deck-throne attended by her entire court, including several new accessions.

Judge Enderby immediately tightened his coils around his captive. Brought up in a rigid school of courtesy toward his elders, the Tyro sought some inoffensive means of breaking away; but when the other hooked an arm into his, alleging the roll of the vessel,--though not in the least needing the support,--he all but gave up hope. For an interminable quarter of an hour the marplot jurist teased his captive. Then, with the air of one making a brilliant discovery, he said:--

"Why, there's your homely little friend."

"Who?" said the Tyro.

"Little Miss--what was it you called her?--oh, yes, Miss Grouch. Strange how these plain girls sometimes attract men, isn't it? Look at the circle around her. Suppose we join it."

The Tyro joyfully assented. The Queen welcomed Judge Enderby graciously, and ordered a chair vacated for him; young Mr. Sperry, whose chair it was, obeying with ill grace. The Tyro she allowed to stand, vouchsafing him only the most careless recognition. Was he not a good ten minutes late? And should the Empress of Hearts be kept waiting with impunity? Punishment, mild but sufficient for a lesson, was to be the portion of the offender. She gave him no opportunity to recall their appointment. And with a quiet suggestion she set young Sperry on his trail.

Now Mr. Diedrick Sperry, never notable for the most amiable of moods and manners, was nourishing in his rather dull brain a sense of injury, in that he had been ousted from his point of vantage. As an object of redress the Tyro struck him as eminently suitable. From Mrs. Denyse he had heard the story of the pushing young "haberdasher," and his suspicions identified the newcomer.

"Say, Miss Cecily," he said, "why 'n't you interdoose your friend to us?" In defense of the Sperry accent, I may adduce that, by virtue of his wealth and position he had felt at liberty to dispense with the lesser advantages of education and culture; therefore he talked the language of Broadway.

"What? To all of you?" she said lazily. "Oh, it would take much too long."

"Well, to me, anyway," insisted the rather thinly gilded youth. "I bin hearin' about him."

"Very well: Mr. Sperry, Mr. Daddleskink."

She pronounced the abominable syllables quite composedly. But upon Mr. Sperry they produced an immediate effect.

"Wha-at!" he cried with a broad grin. "What's the name?"

"Daddleskink," explained the Tyro mildly. "An umlaut over the K, and the final Z silent as in 'buzz.'"

"Daddleskink," repeated the other. "Daddle--Haw! haw! haw!!"

"Cut it, Diddy!" admonished young Journay, giving him a surreptitious dig in the ribs. "Your work is coarse."

Temporarily the trouble-seeker subsided, but presently above the conversation, which had again become general, his cackling voice was heard inquiring from Judge Enderby:--

"Say, Judge, how do you catch a diddleskink? Haw--haw--haw!"

This was rather further than the Empress intended that reprisals for _lèse-majesté_ should go. Still, she was curious to see how her strange acquaintance would bear himself under the test. She watched him from the corner of an observant eye. Would he be disconcerted by the brusqueness of the attack? Would he lose his temper? Would he cheapen himself to answer in kind? What _would_ he do or say?

Habituation to a rough, quick-action life had taught the Tyro to keep his wits, his temper, and his speech. No sign indicated that he had heard the offensive query. He stood quietly at ease, listening to some comments of Lord Guenn on the European situation. Judge Enderby, however, looked the questioner up and down with a disparaging regard and snorted briefly. Feeling himself successful thus far, Sperry turned from a flank to a direct onset.

"Know Mrs. Denyse, Mr. Gazink?" he asked.

"I've met her."

"How? When you were peddlin' neckties and suspenders?"

"No," said the Tyro quietly.

"Doin' much business abroad?" pursued the other.

"No; I'm not here on business. It's a pleasure trip," explained the victim pleasantly.

"Gents' furnishin's must be lookin' up. Go every year?" Mr. Sperry was looking for an opening.

"This is my first trip."

"Your first!" cried the other. "Why, I bin across fifteen times." He conceived the sought-for opening to be before him. "So you're out cuttin' a dash. A sort of haberdash, hey? Haw--haw--haw!" He burst into a paroxysm of self-applausive mirth over his joke, in which a couple of satellites near at hand joined. "Haw--haw--haw!" he roared, stimulated by their support.

The Tyro slowly turned a direct gaze upon his tormentor. "The Western variety of your species," he observed pensively, "pronounce that 'hee-haw' rather than 'haw-haw.'"

There was a counter-chuckle, with Judge Enderby leading. Mr. Sperry's mirth subsided. "Say, what's the chap mean?" he appealed to Journay.

"Oh, go eat a thistle," returned that disgusted youth. "He means you're an ass, and you are. Serves you right."

Sperry rose and hulked out of the circle. "I'll see you on deck--later," he muttered to the Tyro in passing.

Little Miss Grouch turned bright eyes upon him. "Mr. Daddleskink is not addicted to haberdashery exclusively. He also daddles in--"

"Real estate," put in the Tyro.

"Fancy his impudence!" She turned to Lord Guenn. "He wants to buy _my_ house."

"Not the house on the Battery?" said one of the court.

"I say, you know," put in Lord Guenn. "I have a sort of an interest in that house. Had a great-grandfather that was taken in there when he was wounded in one of the colonial wars. The Revolution, I believe you call it."

"Then I suppose you will put in a claim, too, Bertie," said Miss Grouch, and the familiar friendliness of her address caused the Tyro a little unidentified and disconcerting pang.

"Boot's on the other leg," replied the young Englishman. "The house has a claim on us, for hospitality. We paid it in part to old Spencer Forsyth--he was my revered ancestor's friend--when he came over to England after the war. Got a portrait of him now at Guenn Oaks. Straight, lank, stern, level-eyed, shrewd-faced old boy--regular whackin' old Yankee type. I beg your pardon," he added hastily.

"What for?" asked the Tyro with bland but emphatic inquiry.

Lord Guenn was not precisely slug-witted.

"Stupid of me," he confessed heartily. "What should an American gentleman be but of Yankee type? You know,"--he regarded the Tyro thoughtfully,--"his portrait at Guenn Oaks looks a bit like you."

Little Miss Grouch shot a glance of swift interest and curiosity at the Tyro.

"Very likely," he said. "I'm a Yankee, too, and the type persists. Speaking of types, there's the finest young German infant in the steerage that ever took first prize in a baby-show."

As strategy this gained but half its object. Up rose Little Miss Grouch with the suggestion that they all make a pilgrimage to see the Incomparable Infant of her adoption. Much disgruntled, the Tyro brought up the rear. Judge Enderby drew him aside as they approached the steerage rail.

"Young man, are you a fighter?"

"Me? I'm the white-winged dove of peace."

"Then I think I'll warn young Sperry that if he molests you I'll see that--"

"Wait a moment, judge. Don't do that."

"Why not?"

"I don't like the notion. A man ought to be able to take care of himself."

"But he's twice your weight. And he's got a record for beating up waiters and cabbies about New York. Now, my boy," the judge slid a gaunt hand along the other's shoulder and paused. The hand also paused; then it gripped, slid along, gripped again.

"Where did you get those muscles?" he demanded.

"Oh, I've wrestled a bit--foot and horseback both," said the other, modestly omitting to mention that he had won the cowboy equine wrestling-match at Denver two years before.

"Hum! That'll be all right. But why did you tell those people your name was Daddleskink?"

"I didn't. Little Miss--Miss Wayne did."

"So she did. Mystery upon mystery. Well, I'm only the counsel in this case; but it isn't safe, you know, to conceal anything from your lawyer."

At this point the voice of royalty was heard demanding the Tyro. The baby, he was informed, wished to see him. If this were so, that Infant Extraordinary showed no evidence of it, being wholly engrossed with the fascinations of his new mother-by-adoption. However, the chance was afforded for the reigning lady to inform her slave that there was to be dancing that evening in the grand salon, and would he be present?

He would! By all his gods, hopes, and ambitions he would!

As he turned by his liege lady's side, an officer approached and accosted him.

"The captain would like to see you in his cabin at once, if you please."

* * * * *

Among those present at the evening's dance was _not_ Alexander Forsyth Smith, _alias_ Sanders Daddleskink. Great was the wrath of Little Miss Grouch.

IV

Fourth day out.

I don't like this ship or anything about it; its laws, its customs, its manners, methods or morals.

I'm agin the government. Maritime law gives me a cramp. Me for the black flag with the skull and cross-bones.

As for this old Atlantic, I'd as soon be at the bottom as at the top--

SMITH'S LOG.

Peace reigned over that portion of the Atlantic occupied by the Clan Macgregor. The wind had died away in fitful puffs. The waves had subsided. Marked accessions to the deck population were in evidence. Everybody looked cheerful. But Achilles, which is to say the Tyro, sulked in his tent, otherwise Stateroom 123 D.

On deck, Little Miss Grouch sat, outwardly radiant of countenance but privately nursing her second grievance against her slave for that he had failed to obey her behest and appear at the previous evening's dance. Around her, in various attitudes of adoration, sat her court.

Mrs. Charlton Denyse tramped back and forth like a sentinel, watching, not too unobtrusively, the possibly future Mrs. Remsen Van Dam, for she expected developments. In the smoking-room Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson indulged in bridge of a concentrated, reflective, and contentious species. As each practiced a different system, their views at the end of every rubber were the delight of their opponents. They had finished their final fiasco, and were standing at the door, exchanging mutual recriminations, when the Tyro with a face of deepest gloom bore down upon them.

"How much of the ship does the captain own, Dr. Alderson?" he asked, without any preliminaries.

"He doesn't own any of it."

"How much of it does he boss, then?"

"All of it."

"And everybody on board?"

"Yes."

"No one has any rights at all?"

"None that the captain can't overrule."

"Then he can put me in irons if he likes."

"Why, yes, if there be any such thing aboard, which I doubt. What on earth does he want to put you in irons for?"

"He doesn't. At least he didn't look as if he did. But he seems to think he has to, unless I obey orders. He threatened to have me shut up in my cabin."

"Hullo! And what have you been doing that you shouldn't do?"

"Talking to Little Miss Gr--Wayne."

"If that were a punishable offense," put in Judge Enderby, in his weighty voice, "half the men aboard would be in solitary confinement."

"I wish they were," said the Tyro fervently.

Judge Enderby chuckled. "Do you understand that the embargo is general?"

"Applies only to me, as far as I can make out."

"That's curious," said the archæologist. "What did you say to the captain?"

"Told him I'd think it over."

Judge Enderby laughed outright. "That must have occasioned him a mild degree of surprise," he observed.

"I didn't wait to see. I went away from that place before I lost my temper."

"A good rule," approved Dr. Alderson. "Still, I'm afraid he's got you. What do you think, Enderby?"

"I don't think non-professionally on legal matters."

"But what can the boy do?"

"Give me five dollars."

"What?" queried the Tyro.

"Give him five dollars," directed Alderson.

The Tyro extracted a bill from his modest roll and handed it over.

"Thank you," said the jurist. "That is my retainer. You have employed counsel."

"The best counsel in New York," added Dr. Alderson.

"The best counsel in New York," agreed the judge with unmoved solemnity; "in certain respects. Specializes in maritime and cardiac complications. You go out on deck and walk some air into Alderson's brain until I come back. He needs it. He doesn't know enough not to return a suit when his partner leads the nine."

"When one's partner is stupid enough to open a suit--" began the other; but the critic was gone. "So you've found out that Little Miss Grouch is Cecily Wayne, have you?" Alderson observed, turning to the Tyro.

"Whatever that may mean," assented the Tyro.

"It means a good deal. It means that she's Hurry-up Wayne's daughter for one thing."

"That also fails to ring any bell. You see, I've been so long out of the world. Besides, I don't want to be told about her. I'm under bonds."

"Very well. But the _paterfamilias_ is a tough customer. I looked up some old records for him once, and was obliged to tell him a few plain facts in plainer English. He appeared to want me to give false expert testimony. To do him justice, he didn't resent my well-chosen remarks; only observed that he could doubtless hire other historians with different views."

"Was that about the Battery Place house?"

"Precisely. But how do you know--Oh, of course! You've got a sort of intangible interest in that, haven't you? Through your maternal grandmother."

"I've got more than that. I've got an option."

"Great Rameses! Are you the mysterious holder of the option?" Dr. Alderson laughed long and softly. "This is lovely! Does she know?"

"If she does, it hasn't shaken her confidence."

"Hire Enderby to unravel that," chuckled the other. "Here he comes back already. His interview must have been brief."

The lawyer approached, halted, set his back against the rail, and gazed grimly at the Tyro over his lowered spectacles. His client braced himself for the impending examination.

"Young man," the judge inquired, "what do you legally call yourself?"

"Smith. Alexander Forsyth Smith."

"What do you call yourself when you don't call yourself Smith?"

"Er--you heard! I've sometimes been called Daddleskink by those who don't know any better. That was only a little joke."

"It's a joke which Captain Herford seems to have taken to heart. He thinks you're a dangerous criminal traveling under the subtle _alias_ of Smith."

"Can he lock me up for that?"

"Doubtless he can. But I don't think he will. Who's been sending back wireless messages about you?"

"Wireless? About me? Heaven knows; I don't."

"Could it have been Mrs. Charlton Denyse?"

"If they were uncomplimentary, it might. I'm afraid she doesn't approve of me."

"They seem to have been distinctly unfavorable. That Denyse female," continued the veteran lawyer, "is a raddled old polecat. Mischief is her specialty. How did she get on your trail?"

The Tyro explained.

"Hum! I'll bet a cigar with a gold belt around its stomach that the captain wishes she were out yonder playing with the porpoises. He doesn't look happy."

"What ails him?" inquired Dr. Alderson.

"Five different messages from Henry Clay Wayne, to begin with. Also, I fear my interview with him didn't have a sedative effect."

"What did you say to him?" asked his client.

"I informed him that I'd been retained by our young friend here, and that if he were restrained of his liberty without due cause we would promptly bring suit against the line. Thereupon he tried to bluff me. It's a melancholy thing, Alderson," sighed the tough old warrior of a thousand legal battles, "to look as easy and browbeatable as I do. It wastes a lot of my time--and other people's."

"Did it waste much of the captain's on this occasion?"

"No. He threatened to lock me up, too. I told him if he did, he and his company would have another batch of suits; a suit for every day in the week, like the youth that married the tailor's daughter.

"He called me some sort of sea-lawyer, and was quite excited until I calmed him with my card. When I left he was looking at my card as if it had just bitten him, and sending out a summons for the wireless operator that had all the timbre of an S.O.S. call. Young man, he'll want to see you about three o'clock this afternoon if I'm not mistaken."

"What shall I do about it?" asked the Tyro.

"Give me five dollars. Thank you. I never work for nothing. Against my principles. I'm now employed for the case. Go and see him, and keep a stiff upper lip. Now, Alderson, your theory that a man must indicate every high card in his hand before--"

Perceiving that he was no longer essential to the conversation the Tyro drifted away. Luncheon was a gloomy meal. It was with rather a feeling of relief that he answered the summons to the captain's room two hours thereafter.

"Mr. Daddlesmith," began that harried official.

"That isn't my name," said the Tyro firmly.

"Well, Mr. Daddleskink, or Smith, or whatever you choose to call yourself, I've had an interview with your lawyer."

"Yes? Judge Enderby?"

"Judge Enderby. He threatens to sue, if you are confined to your stateroom."

"That's our intention."

"I've no lawyer aboard, and I can't risk it. So I'll not lock you up. But I'll tell you what I can and will do. If you so much as address one word to Miss Wayne for the rest of this voyage, I'll lock _her_ up and keep her locked up."

The Tyro went red and then white. "I don't believe you've got the power," he said.

"I have; and I'll use it. Her father gives me full authority. Make no mistake about the matter, Mr. Smith: one word to her, and down she goes. And I shall instruct every officer and steward to be on watch."

"As Judge Enderby has probably already told you what he thinks of your methods" (this was a random shot, but the marksman observed with satisfaction that the captain winced), "it would be superfluous for me to add anything."

"Superfluous and risky," retorted the commander.

The Tyro went out on deck because he felt that he needed air. Malign fate would have it that, as he stood at the rail, brooding over this unsurmountable complication, Little Miss Grouch should appear, radiant, glorious of hue, and attended by the galaxy of swains. She gave him the lightest of passing nods as she went by. He raised his cap gloomily.

"Your queer-named friend doesn't look happy," commented Lord Guenn at her elbow.

"Go and tell him I wish to speak with him," ordered the delectable tyrant.

The Englishman did so.

"I'm not feeling well," apologized the Tyro. "Please ask her to excuse me."

"You'd best ask her yourself," suggested the other. "I'm not much of a diplomat."

"No. I'm going below," said the wretched Tyro.

Well for him had he gone at once. But he lingered, and when he turned again he was frozen with horror to see her bearing down upon him with all sails set and colors flying.

"Why weren't you at the dance last night?" she demanded.

He looked at her with a piteous eye and shook his head.

"Not feeling fit?"

Another mute and miserable denial.

"I don't believe it! You aren't a bit pea-green. Quite red, on the contrary."

Silence from the victim.

"Besides, you know, you're the seaworthy child," she mocked.

"'Whose feelings could never be riled. While the porpoises porped And the passengers torped, _He_ sat on the lee rail and smiled.'

Here's the lee rail. Haven't you a single smile about you anywhere?"

He shook his head with infinite vigor.

"Can't you even speak? Is that the way a Perfect Pig should act?" she persisted, impishly determined to force him out of his extraordinary silence. "Have you made a vow? Or what?"