The Nest Builder Part 3

"Oh, yes, I could have gone to them--I wasn't in danger of starvation.

But," she shook her head emphatically, "a poor relation! I couldn't have stood that."

"Well," he turned squarely toward her, his elbow on the rail, "I can't help asking this, you know; where were the bachelors of Lindum?"

She smiled, still in her friendly, unembarra.s.sed way.

"I know what you mean, of course. The older men say it quite openly in England.--'Why don't a nice gel like you get married?'--It's rather a long story." ("Has she been in love?" Stefan wondered.) "First of all, there are very few young men of one's own sort in Lindum; most of them are in the Colonies. Those there are--one or two lawyers, doctors, and squires' sons--are frightfully sought after." She made a wry face.

"Too much compet.i.tion for them, altogether, and--" she seemed to take a plunge before adding--"I've never been successful at bargain counters."

He turned that over for a moment. "I see," he said. "At least I should do, if it weren't for it being you. Look here, Miss Elliston, honestly now, fair and square--" he smiled confidingly at her--"you're not asking me to believe that the compet.i.tion in your ease didn't appear in the other s.e.x?"

"Mr. Byrd," she answered straightly, "in my world girls have to have more than a good appearance." She shrugged her shoulders rather disdainfully. "I had no money, and I had opinions."

("She's been in love--slightly," he decided.) "Opinions," he echoed, "what kind? Mustn't one have any in Lindum?"

"Young girls mustn't--only those they are taught," she replied. "I read a good deal, I sympathized with the Liberals. I was even--" her voice dropped to mock horror--"a Suffragist!"

"I've heard about that," he interposed eagerly, "though the French women don't seem to care much. You wanted to vote? Well, why ever not?"

She gave him the brightest smile he had yet received.

"Oh, how nice of you!" she cried. "You really mean that?"

"Couldn't see it any other way. I've always liked and believed in women more than men. I learnt that in childhood," he added, frowning.

"Splendid! I'm so glad," she responded. "You see, with our men it's usually the other way round. My ideas were a great handicap at home."

"So you decided to leave?"

"Yes; I went to London and got a job teaching some children sums and history--two hours every morning. In the afternoons I worked at stories for the magazines, and placed a few, but they pay an unknown writer horribly badly. I lived with an old lady as companion for two months, but that was being a poor relation minus the relationship--I couldn't stand it. I joined the Suffragists in London--not the Militants--I don't quite see their point of view--and marched in a parade. Brother-in-law heard of it, and wrote me I could not expect anything from them unless I stopped it." She laughed quietly.

Stefan flushed. He p.r.o.nounced something--conclusively--in French.

Then--"Don't ask me to apologize, Miss Elliston."

"I won't," rea.s.suringly. "I felt rather like that, too. I wrote that I didn't expect anything as it was. Then I sat down and thought about the whole question of women in England and their chances. I had a hundred pounds and a few ornaments of Mother's. I love children, but I didn't want to be a governess. I wanted to stand alone in some place where my head wouldn't be pushed down every time I tried to raise it. I believed in America people wouldn't say so often, 'Why doesn't a nice girl like you get married?' so I came, and here I am. That's the whole story--a very humdrum one."

"Yes, here you are, thank G.o.d!" proclaimed Stefan devoutly. "What magnificent pluck, and how divine of you to tell me it all! You've saved me from suicide, almost. These people immolate me."

"How delightfully he exaggerates!" she thought.

"What thousands of things we can talk about," he went on in a burst of enthusiasm. "What a perfectly splendid time we are going to have!" He all but warbled.

"I hope so," she answered, smilingly, "but there goes the gong, and I'm ravenous."

"Dinner!" he cried scornfully; "suet pudding, all those horrible people--you want to leave this--?" He swept his arm over the glittering water.

"I don't, but I want my dinner," she maintained.

This checked his spirits for a moment; then enlightenment seemed to burst upon him.

"Glorious creature!" he apostrophized her. "She must be fed, or she would not glow with such divine health! That gong was for the first table, and I'm not in the least hungry. Nevertheless, we will eat, here and now."

She demurred, but he would have his way, demanding it in celebration of their meeting. He found the deck steward, tipped him, and exacted the immediate production of two dinners. He ensconced Miss Elliston in some one else's chair, conveniently placed, settled her with some one else's cushions, which he chose from the whole deck for their color--a clean blue--and covered her feet with the best rug he could find. She accepted his booty with only slight remonstrance, being too frankly engaged by his spirits to attempt the role of extinguisher. He settled himself beside her, and they lunched delightedly, like children, on chops and a rice pudding.

V

It is not too easy to appropriate a pretty girl on board ship. There are always young men who expect the voyage to offer a flirtation, and who spend much ingenuity in heading each other off from the companionship of the most attractive damsels. But the "English girl" was not in the "pretty" cla.s.s. She was a beauty, of the grave and pure type which implies character. All the children knew her; all the women and men watched her; but few of the latter had ventured to speak to her, even before Stefan claimed her as his monopoly. For this he did, from the moment of their first encounter. To him n.o.body on the ship existed but her, and he a.s.sumed the right to show it.

He had trouble from only two people. One was the Scotchman, McEwan, whose hide seemed impervious to rebuffs, and who would charge into a conversation with the weight of a battering ram, planting himself implacably in a chair beside Miss Elliston, and occasionally reducing even Stefan to silence. The other was Miss Elliston herself. She was kind, she was friendly, she was boyishly frank. But occasionally she would withdraw into herself, and sometimes would disappear altogether into her cabin, to be found again, after long search, telling stories to some of the children. On such occasions Stefan roamed the decks and saloons very like a hungry wolf, snapping with intolerable rudeness at any one who spoke to him. This, however, few troubled to do, for he was cordially disliked, both for his own sake and because of his success with Miss Elliston. That success the ship could not doubt. Though she was invariably polite to every one, she walked and talked only with him or the children. She was, of course, above the social level of the second-cla.s.s; but this the English did not resent, because they understood it, nor the Americans, because they were unaware of it. On the other hand, English and Americans alike resented Byrd, whom they could neither place nor understand. These two became the most conspicuous people in the cabin, and their every movement was eagerly watched and discussed, though both remained entirely oblivious to it.

Stefan was absorbed in the girl, that was clear; but how far she might be in him the cabin could not be sure. She brightened when he appeared.

She liked him, smiled at him, and listened to him. She allowed him to monopolize her. But she never sought him out, never snubbed McEwan for his intrusions into their tete-a-tetes, seemed not to be "managing" the affair in any way. Used to more obvious methods, most of the company were puzzled. They did not understand that they were watching the romance of a woman who added perfect breeding to her racial self-control. Mary Elliston would never wear her feelings nakedly, nor allow them to ride her out of hand.

Not so Stefan, who was, as yet unknowingly, experiencing romantic love for the first time. This girl was the most glorious creature he had ever known, and the most womanly. Her s.e.x was the very essence of her; she had no need to wear it like a furbelow. She was utterly different from the feminine, adroit women he had known; there was something cool and deep about her like a pool, and withal winged, like the birds that fly over it. She was marvelous--marvelous! he thought. What a find!

His spirit flung itself, kneeling, to drink at the pool--his imagination reached out to touch the wings. For the first time in his life he was too deeply enthralled to question himself or her. He gloried in her openly, conspicuously.

On the morning of the fifth day they had their first dispute. They were sitting on the boat deck, aft, watching the wake of the ship as it twisted like an uncertain white serpent. Stefan was sketching her, as he had done already several times when he could get her apart from hovering children--he could not endure being overlooked as he worked. "They chew gum in my ear, and breathe down my neck," he would explain.

He had almost completed an impression of her head against the sky, with a flying veil lifting above it, when a shadow fell across the canvas, and the voice of McEwan blared out a pleased greeting.

"Weel, here ye are!" exclaimed that mountain of tweed, lowering himself onto a huge iron cleat between which and the bulwarks the two were sitting cross-legged. "I was speerin' where ye'd both be."

"Good Lord, McEwan, can't you speak English?" exclaimed Byrd, with quick exasperation.

"I hae to speak the New York lingo when I get back there, ye ken,"

replied the Scot with imperturbable good humor, "so I like to use a wee bit o' the guid Scotch while I hae the chance."

"A wee bit!" snorted Stefan, and "Good morning, Mr. McEwan, isn't it beautiful up here?" interposed Miss Elliston, pleasantly.

"It's grand," replied the Scotchman, "and ye look bonnie i' the sun," he added simply.

"So Mr. Byrd thinks. You see he has just been painting me," she answered smilingly, indicating, with a touch of mischief, the drawing that Stefan had hastily slipped between them.

The Scotchman stooped, and, before Stefan could stop him, had the sketch in his hand.

"It's a guid likeness," he p.r.o.nounced, "though I dinna care mesel'

for yon new-fangled way o' slappin' on the color. I'll mak'ye a suggestion--" But he got no further, for Stefan, incoherent with irritation, s.n.a.t.c.hed the sketch from his hands and broke out at him in a stammering torrent of French of the Quarter, which neither of his listeners, he was aware, could understand. Having safely consigned all the McEwans of the universe to pig-sties and perdition, he walked off to cool himself, the sketch under his arm, leaving both his hearers incontinently dumb.

McEwan recovered first. "The puir young mon suffers wi' his temper, there's nae dooting," said he, addressing himself to the task of entertaining his rather absent-minded companion.

His advantage lasted but a few moments, however. Byrd, repenting his strategic error, returned, and in despair of other methods succeeded in summoning a candid smile.

"Look here, McEwan," said he, with the charm of manner he knew so well how to a.s.sume, "don't mind my irritability; I'm always like that when I'm painting and any one interrupts--it sends me crazy. The light's just right, and it won't be for long. I can't possibly paint with anybody round. Won't you, like a good fellow, get out and let me finish?"

His frankness was wonderfully disarming, but in any case, the Scot was always good nature's self.