Little Miss Grouch Part 23

While consciousness was still feebly efficient, but control had pa.s.sed from the surrendering mind, she stretched out a groping hand. The Tyro's closed over it very gently. At the corner of her delicate mouth the merest ghost of a smile flickered and pa.s.sed. Little Miss Grouch went deep into the land of dreams, with her knight keeping watch and ward over her.

Came then the destroying ogre, in the form of the captain, and pa.s.sed on; came then the wicked fairy, in the person of Mrs. Charlton Denyse, and pa.s.sed on, not without some gnashing of metaphorical teeth (her own, I regret to state, she had left in her berth); came also the G.o.d from the machine, in the shape of Judge Willis Enderby, with his friend Dr.

Alderson, and paused near the group.

"Love," observed the jurist softly, "is nine tenths opportunity and the rest importunity. I hope our young protege doesn't forget that odd tenth. It's important."

"It seems to me," observed his companion suspiciously, "that you boast considerable wisdom about the tender pa.s.sion."

The ablest honest lawyer in New York sighed. "I am old who once was young, but _ego in Arcadia fui_ and I have not forgotten." Then the two old friends pa.s.sed on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HER KNIGHT KEEPING WATCH OVER HER]

VII

Seventh day out.

This sea-life is too darned changeable for me.

You never know what next.

It's bad for the nerves--

Smith's Log.

Thus the Tyro, in much perturbation of spirit, at the end of a lonely day. "_Varium et mutabile semper_," was written, however, not of the sea but of woman. And it was of woman and woman's incomprehensibility that the keeper of the private log was petulantly thinking when he made that entry.

For, far from harrying him about the decks, Little Miss Grouch had now withdrawn entirely from his ken. He had written her once, he had written her twice; he had surrept.i.tiously thrust a third note beneath her door.

No answer came to any of his communications. Being comparatively innocent of the way of a maid with a man, the Tyro was discouraged. He considered that he was not being fairly used. And he gloomed and moped and was an object of private mirth to Judge Enderby.

Two perfectly sound reasons accounted for the Joyous Vision's remaining temporarily invisible. The first was that she needed sleep, and Stateroom 129 D, which she had once so despitefully characterized, seemed a very haven of restfulness when, after breakfast, it was reported habitably dried out; the other was a queer and exasperating reluctance to meet the Tyro--yes, even to see him. As the lifting of the embargo on speech was not known to him, she knew herself to be insured against direct address. But the mere thought of meeting him face to face, of having those clear, quiet gray eyes look into hers again, gave her the most mysterious and disquieting sensations.

"I do wish," said Little Miss Grouch to herself, "that his name weren't so perfectly _awful_."

Some thought-demon with a special mission for the persecution of maidens, put it into her head to inquire why she should so vehemently wish this thing. And the trail of that thought plunged her, face-first, into her pillow.

Thereafter she decided that if she went on deck at all that day, it would be with such a surrounding of bodyguard as should keep wandering Daddleskinks quite beyond her range of a.s.sociation. As for his notes, she would answer them when she thought fit. Meantime--as the writer thereof might have been enheartened to know--she put them away in the most private and personal compartment of her trunk, giving each a tender little pat to settle it comfortably into its place.

Doubtless the sun shone that day (the official records said, "Clear with light winds and a calm sea"); doubtless the crippled ship limped happily enough on her way; doubtless there was good food and drink, music and merriment, and the solace of enlivening company aboard. But the snap-shot of the Tyro surrept.i.tiously taken by Judge Enderby--he having borrowed Alderson's traveling-camera for the purpose--showed a face which might suitably have been used as a marginal ill.u.s.tration for that cheerless hymn, "This world is all a fleeting show."

Life had lost all its flavor for the Tyro. He politely accepted Dr.

Alderson's invitation to walk, but lagged with so springless a step that the archaeologist began to be concerned for his health. At Lord Guenn's later suggestion that squash was the thing for incipient seediness, he tried that, but played a game far too listless for the Englishman's prowess.

In vain did he seek consolation in the society of Karl, the Pride of the Steerage. That intelligent infant wept and would not be comforted because the pretty lady had not come also, and the Tyro was well fain to join him in his lamentations. Only the threatening advance of Diedrick Sperry, with a prominent and satisfactory decoration in dusky blue protruding from his forehead, roused him to a temporary zest in life.

Mr. Sperry came, breathing threats and future slaughter, but met a disconcertingly cold and undisturbable gleam of the gray eye.

"If you interfere with me again," said the Tyro, "I'll throw you overboard."

And it was said in such evident good faith that his opponent deemed it best to forget that matter, vaguely suspecting that he had encountered a "professional."

A more fearsome opponent bore down upon the depressed scion of all the Smiths, late that afternoon. Mrs. Charlton Denyse maneuvered him into a curve of the rail, and there held him with her glittering eye.

"I beg your pardon." This, pitched on a flat and haughty level of vocality, was her method of opening the conversation.

The Tyro sought refuge in the example of cla.s.sic lore. "You haven't offended me," he said, patterning his response upon the White Queen.

"Perhaps you're going to," he added apprehensively.

"I am going to talk to you for your own good," was the chill retort.

"Oh, Lord! That's worse."

"Do you see that ship?" The Denyse hand pointed, rigid as a bar, to the south, where the Tyro discerned a thin smudge of smoke.

"I see something."

"That is the Nantasket."

"At this distance I can't deny it," murmured the Tyro.

"Which left New York two days behind us, and is now overhauling us, owing to our accident."

He received this news with a bow.

"On board her is Henry Clay Wayne," she continued weightily.

"Congratulations on your remarkable keenness of vision!" exclaimed the Tyro.

"Don't be an imbecile," said the lady, "I didn't see him. I learned by wireless."

"Rather a specialty of yours, wireless, isn't it?" he queried.

She shot an edged look at him, but his expression was innocence itself.

"He will reach England before us."

"Then you don't think he'll board us and make us all walk the plank?"

asked the Tyro in an apparent agony of relief.

"Don't get flip--" cried the exasperated lady--"pant," she added barely in time--"with me. Mr. Wayne will be in England waiting for you."

"Anyway, he can't eat me," the Tyro comforted himself. "Shall I hide in the stoke-hole? Shall I disguise myself as a rat and go ash.o.r.e in the cargo? What do you advise?"

"I advise you to keep away from Miss Wayne."

"Yes. You did that before. At present I'm doing so."