Antony Gray-Gardener Part 5

Antony, leaning on the rail of the upper deck, was content, blissfully content. The sole speck that marred his entire enjoyment was the fact that the rules of the boat had separated him, _pro tem_, from an exceedingly perplexed and distressed puppy. It was the perplexity and distress of the said puppy that caused the speck, rather than the separation. Antony, with the vaster wisdom vouchsafed to humans, knew the present separation to be of comparatively short duration, and to be endured in the avoidance of a possibly infinitely longer one. Not so Josephus. He suffered in silence, since his deity had commanded the silence, but the perplexed grief in his puppy heart found an echo in Antony's.

It was a faint echo, however. Time and a daily visit would bring consolation to Josephus; and, for himself, the present adventure--it was an adventure--was all-absorbing and delicious. He revelled in it like a schoolboy on a holiday. He watched the sparkling water, the tiny rippling waves; he felt the freshness of the sea breeze, and the throb of the engine like a great living heart in the body of the boat. The fact that there were other people on her decks concerned him not at all. Those who have travelled a good deal become, generally speaking, one of two types,--the type that is quite enormously interested in everyone, and the type that is entirely indifferent to any one. Antony was of this last type. He had acquired a faculty for shutting his mental, and to a great degree, his physical eyes to his human fellows, except in so far as sheer necessity compelled. Naturally this did not make for popularity; but, then, Antony did not care much for popularity. The winning of it would have been too great an effort for his nature; the retaining of it, even more strenuous. Of course the whole thing is entirely a question of temperament.

A few of the other pa.s.sengers looked somewhat curiously at the tall lean man gazing out to sea; but, as he was so obviously oblivious of their very existence, so entirely absorbed in his contemplation of the ocean, they left him undisturbed.

It was not till the dressing bugle sounded that he roused himself, and descended to his cabin. It was a matter for his fervent thanksgiving that he had found himself the sole occupant of the tiny two-berthed apartment.

He arrayed himself with scrupulous care. Only the most stringent exigencies of time and place--though they for a while had been frequent--had ever caused him to forego the ceremonial of donning dress clothes for dinner, though no eyes but his own should behold him.

Latterly there had been Riffle and then Josephus to behold, and the former to marvel. Josephus took it, puppy-like, as a matter of course.

There were not a vast number of pa.s.sengers on the boat. Of the four tables in the dining saloon, Antony found only two fully laid, and a third partially so. His own place was some three seats from the captain's left. The chair on the captain's right was, as yet, unoccupied. For the rest, with but one or two exceptions at the other tables, the pa.s.sengers had already put in an appearance. The almost entire absence of wind, the smoothness of the ocean, had given courage even to those the most susceptible to the sea's malady. It would have required a really vivid imagination to have perceived any motion in the boat other than the throbbing of her engines.

Antony slipped into his seat, and a steward placed a plate of clear soup before him. In the act of taking his first spoonful, he paused, his eyes arrested by the sight of a woman advancing towards the chair on the captain's right.

At the first glance, Antony saw that she was a tall woman, dressed in black unrelieved save for ruffles of soft creamy lace at her throat and wrists. Presently he took in further details, the dark chestnut of her hair, the warm ivory of her skin, the curious steady gravity of her eyes--grey or violet, he was not sure which,--the straight line of her eyebrows, the delicate chiselling of her nose, and the red-rose of her mouth. And yet, in spite of seeing the details, they were submerged in the personality which had first arrested him. Something within him told him as clearly as spoken words, that here, in her presence, lay the explanation of the instinct which had prompted him to take his pa.s.sage on this boat.

An odd little thrill of unaccountable excitement ran through him. He felt like a man who had been shown a page in his own life-book, and who found the words written thereon extraordinarily and amazingly interesting. He found himself longing, half-inarticulately, to turn the leaf; and, yet, he knew that Time's hand alone could do this. He could only read as far as the end of the open page before him. And that page but recorded the fact of her presence.

Once, during the repast, her eyes met his, steady, grave, and yet with a little note of half interrogation in them. Again Antony felt that odd little thrill run through him, this time intensified, while his heart beat and pounded under his immaculate white shirt-front.

Perhaps it is a mercy that shirt-fronts, to say nothing of other things, do hide the vagaries of our hearts. It would be a sorry thing for us if the world at large could perceive them,--the joy, the anguish, the remorse, and the bitter little disappointments. Yes, above all, the bitter little disappointments, the cause possibly so trivial, so childish almost, yet the hurt, the wound, so very real, the pain so horribly poignant. It is the little stab which smarts the most; the blow which accompanies the deeper wound, numbs in its very delivery.

Later, in the moonlit darkness, Antony found himself again on deck, and again leaning by the rail. Yet this time he had that page from his life-book for company; and, marvelling, he perused the written words thereon. It was extraordinary that they should hold such significance for him. And why for him alone? he queried. Might not another, others even, have read the selfsame words?

With the thought came a pang of something akin to jealousy at his heart.

He wanted the words for himself, written for him alone. And yet it was entirely obvious, considering the number at the table, that they must have been recorded for others also, since, as already mentioned, they but recorded the fact of her presence. But did they hold the same significance for the others? There was the question, and there possibly, nay probably, lay the comfort. Also, what lay on the other side of the page? Unanswerable at the moment.

He looked down at the gliding water, alive, alight with brilliant phosphorus. A step behind him made his heart leap. He did not turn, but he was conscious of a figure on his right, also looking down upon the water. Suddenly there was a faint flutter of drapery, and the breeze sent a trail of something soft and silky across his eyes.

"Oh, I am sorry," said a voice in the darkness.

Antony turned.

"The wind caught it," she explained apologetically, tucking the chiffon streamer within her cloak.

Now, it is quite certain that Antony had here an opportunity to make one of those little ordinary pleasant remarks that invariably lead to a conversation, but none presented itself to his mind. He could do nothing but utter the merest formal, though of course polite, acknowledgment of her apology, his brain seeking wildly for further words the while. It found none.

She gave him a little bow, courteous and not at all unfriendly, and moved away across the deck. Antony looked after her figure receding in the darkness.

"Oh, you idiot," he groaned within his heart, "you utter and double-dyed idiot."

He looked despairingly down at the water, and from it to the moonlit sky.

Fate, so he mused ruefully, writes certain sentences in our life-book, truly; but it behoves each one of us to fill in between the lines. And he had filled in--nothing.

An hour or so later he descended dejectedly to his cabin.

CHAPTER IV

THE LADY OF THE BLUE BOOK

He saw her at breakfast the next morning; and again, later, sitting on a deck-chair, with a book.

Once more he cursed his folly of the previous evening. A word or two then, no matter how trivial their utterance, and the barriers of convention would have been pa.s.sed. Even should Fate throw a like opportunity in his path again, it was entirely improbable that she would choose the same hour. She is ever chary of exact repet.i.tions. And, if his stammering tongue failed in speech with the soft darkness to cover its shyness, how was it likely it would find utterance in the broad light of day? The Moment--he spelled it with a capital--had pa.s.sed, and would never again recur. Therefore he seated himself on his own deck-chair, some twenty paces from her, and began to fill his pipe, gloomily enough.

Yet, in spite of gloom, he watched her,--surrept.i.tiously of course. There was no ill-bred staring in his survey.

She was again dressed in black, but this time the lace ruffles had given place to soft white muslin cuffs and collar. Her dark hair was covered by a broad-brimmed black hat. She was leaning back in her chair as she read, the book lying on her lap. Suddenly the gravity of her face relaxed. A smile rippled across it like a little breeze across the surface of some lake. The smile broke into silent laughter. Antony found himself smiling in response.

She looked up from her book, and out over the sun-kissed water, the amus.e.m.e.nt still trembling on her lips and dancing in her eyes.

"I wonder," reflected Antony watching her, "what she has been reading."

For some ten minutes she sat gazing at the sunshine. Then she rose from her chair, placed her book upon it, and went towards the stairway which led to the lower deck.

Antony looked at the empty chair--empty, that is, except for a pale blue cushion and a deeper blue book. On the back of the chair, certain letters were painted,--P. di D.

Antony surveyed them gravely. The first letter really engrossed his attention. The last was merely an adjunct. The first would represent--or should represent--the real woman. He marshalled every possibility before him, merely to dismiss them: Patience, Phyllis, Prudence, Priscilla, Perpetua, Penelope, Persis, Phoebe, Pauline,--none were to his mind. The last appeared to him the most possible, and yet it did not truly belong.

So he summed up its fitness. Yet, for the life of him, he could find no other. He had run through the whole gamut attached to the initial, so he told himself. Curiosity, or interest, call it what you will, fell back baffled.

He got up from his chair, and began to pace the deck. Pa.s.sing her chair, he gazed again upon the letters painted thereon, as if challenging them to disclose the secret. Inscrutable, they stared back blankly at him.

Turning for the third time, he perceived that she had returned on deck.

She was carrying a small bag of old gold brocade. She was in the chair once more as he came alongside of her; but the blue book had slipped to the ground. He bent to pick it up, involuntarily glancing at the t.i.tle as he handed it to her. _Dream Days_. It fitted into his imaginings of her.

"Do you know it?" she queried, noticing his glance.

"No," replied Antony, turning the book in his hands.

"Oh, but you should," she smiled back at him. "That is if you have the smallest memory of your own childhood. I was just laughing over 'death letters' ten minutes ago."

"Death letters?" queried Antony perplexed, the while his heart was singing a little paean of joy at the vagaries of Fate's methods.

"Yes; a will or testament. But a death letter is so infinitely more explanatory. Don't you think, so?"

Antony laughed.

"Of course," he agreed, light breaking in upon him.

"Take the book if you care to," she said. "I know it nearly by heart. But I had it by me, and brought it on deck to look at it again. I didn't want to get absorbed in anything entirely new. It takes one's mind from all this, and seems a loss." A little gesture indicated sunshine, sea, and sky.

"Yes," agreed Antony, "it's waste of time to read in the open." And then he stopped. "Oh, I didn't mean--" he stammered, glancing down at the book, and perceiving ungraciousness in his words.

"Oh, yes, you did," she a.s.sured him smiling, "and it was quite true, and not in the least rude. Read it in your berth some time; you can do it there with an easy conscience."