Chapter 7

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_ CHAPTER 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For, far from harrying him about the decks, Little Miss Grouch had now withdrawn entirely from his ken.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 surreptitiously 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 association. 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 surreptitiously 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 illustration 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 classic 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 ashore 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."

"Then continue."

"I shall, until we reach solid earth."

"There my responsibility will cease. Mr. Wayne will know how to protect his daughter from upstart fortune-hunters."

The Tyro regarded her with an unruffled brow. "Never hunted a fortune in my life. A modest competence is the extent of my ambition, and I've attained that, thanking you for your kind interest."

"In the necktie and suspender business, I suppose," she snapped, enraged at her failure to pierce the foe's armor. "It's a crying scandal that you should thrust yourself on your betters."

This annoyed the Tyro. Not that he allowed Mrs. Denyse to perceive it. With a bland, reminiscent smile he remarked:--

"Speaking of scandals, I observed a young man, rather informally clad, entering Stateroom 144 D at a late hour last night, in some haste."

"Oh!" gasped Mrs. Denyse, and there was murder in her tones.

"He looked to me like young Sperry."

Mrs. Denyse glowed ocular fire.

"And, according to the list, Stateroom 144 D is occupied by Mrs. Charlton Denyse."

Mrs. Denyse growled an ominous, subterranean growl.

"Now, my dear madam, in view of this fact, which I perceive you do not deny" (here the lady gave evidence of having a frenzied protest stuck in her throat like a bone), "I would suggest that you cease chaperoning me and attend to the proprieties in your own case. Hi, Dr. Alderson!" he called to that unsuspecting savant who was passing, "will you look after Mrs. Denyse for a bit? I fear she's ill." And he made his escape.

What Mrs. Denyse said to Dr. Alderson when she regained the power of coherent speech, is beside the purposes of this chronicle. Suffice it to state that he left in some alarm, believing the unfortunate woman to have lost her mind.

The Tyro sought out his deck-chair and relapsed into immitigable boredom. He was not the only person aboard to be dissatisfied with the way affairs were developing. As an amateur Cupid, Judge Enderby had been fancying himself quite decidedly. Noting, however, that there had been absolutely no communication between his two young clients that day, he began to distrust his diplomacy, and he set about the old, familiar problem of administering impetus to inertia. Sad though I am to say it of so eminent a member of the bar, his method perilously approached betrayal of a client's confidence.

It was after his evening set-to at bridge, when, coming on deck for a good-night sniff of air, he encountered the Tyro who was lugubriously contemplating the moon.

"Hah!" he greeted. "How's the dumb palsy?"

"Worse," was the morose reply.

"Haven't seen your pretty little acquaintance about to-day. Have you?"

"No."

"Don't swear at me, young man," reproved the lawyer, mildly.

"I didn't swear at you, sir," said the startled Tyro.

"Not in words, but in tone. Not that I blame you for being put out. At your age, to miss the sun from out of the heavens--and Miss Wayne is certainly a fascinating and dangerous young person. Considering that she is barely twenty-one, it is quite remarkable."

"Remarkable?" repeated the Tyro vaguely.

"Considering that she is barely twenty-one, I said."

The Tyro rubbed his head. Was loneliness befuddling his brain? "I'm afraid I'm stupid," he apologized.

"I'm afraid your fears are well based."

"But--_what's_ remarkable?"

"It's remarkable that you should be deaf as well as dumb," retorted the other, testily. "To resume: considering that she is barely twenty-one--not nearly, but _barely_ twenty-one, you'll note--"

"You needn't go any further," cried the youth, suddenly enlightened. "Twenty-one is legal age on the high seas?"

"It is."

"Then she's her own mistress and the captain has no more authority over her than over me?"

"So much, I have reason to believe, an eminent legal authority pointed out to the captain yesterday."

"Why didn't that same eminent authority point it out to me before?"

"Before? I object to the implication. I haven't pointed it out to you now. Your own natural, if somewhat sluggish intelligence inferred it from a random remark about a friend's age."

"Does she know it?"

"She does."

"Since when?"

"Since some forty-eight hours."

"Then, why on earth didn't she tell me? She knew I didn't dare speak to her. But she never said a word."

"Give me," began the judge, "five" (here the Tyro reached for his pocket, but the other repudiated the gesture with a wave of the hand) "million dollars, and I wouldn't undertake to guess why any female between the ages of one and one hundred years, does or does not do any given thing. I'm no soothsayer."

"Then I may speak to her to-morrow, without fear of making trouble?"

"You may certainly speak to her--if you can find her. As for trouble, I wouldn't care to answer for you," chuckled the judge. "Good-night to you."

The Tyro sat up late, asking questions of the moon, who, being also of feminine gender, obstinately declined to betray the secrets of the sex. _

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