resumed his pacing and his disturbed meditations. If he could only keep
himself firmly in hand during those next four days, all would be well.
Once safely anchored in the harbor of his sister's eminently proper
English circle, the song of the siren would doubtless fade away, and he
would thank Heaven fervently for his miraculous escape. Meanwhile he
listened with increasing impatience for the first flutter of the siren's
wings,
"Wanchee Manchu coatt?" whispered an insidious voice at his elbow, and,
looking down, he saw the enterprising lad with a pile of gorgeous silks
over his arm and cupidity writ large in his narrow eyes.
"No, no; go away!" commanded Percival.
"Velly fine dragon coat. Him all same b'long mandarin. How much?"
Percival turned away, but at every step was presented with another
garment for inspection. Despite himself, his artistic eye was caught and
held by the beauty of the fabrics.
"How much?" he asked, picking up a marvelous affair of silver and gray,
lined with the faintest of shell pinks. It was the exact tone and sheen
to set Bobby's beauty off to the greatest advantage. The argument over
the price was short and fierce, and Percival laid the coat beside the
pendant on the table.
He promised himself to offset the effect of these gifts by a more
detached and impersonal manner than he had shown Bobby during the day.
So far, he congratulated himself, he had given her no occasion for false
hopes. On the contrary, he had gone out of his way on several occasions
to express his bitter disapproval of international marriages. When the
hour came for them to part, his heart might be mortally wounded, but his
conscience, save for a few scratches, would be uninjured.
A quick step in the corridor made him look up. Standing in the doorway
was a vision of girlish beauty that had the acrobatic effect of sending
his blood into his head and his heart into his eyes. She wore the
diaphanous gown of white that he liked best, her hair was coiled at the
exact angle he had prescribed, and at her belt were the orchids he had
sent up half an hour before. No rhinestones in her hair, no gold beads
on her slippers, nothing to mar the simplicity that her all too vivid
beauty required. Percival's eyes appraised her at her full value. Even
Sister Cordelia would have been propitiated by the sight.
"What's this lovely thing?" cried Bobby, pouncing upon the coat.
"Something I bought to be rid of a troublesome lad. Don't know what I
shall do with it, exactly."
"Take it to your sister, of course,"
"She probably has heaps of them."
Bobby slipped her round, bare arms into the loose sleeves, and surveyed
herself in the long mirror.
"Isn't that the prettiest thing you ever saw?" she asked, glancing at
him over her shoulder.
[Illustration: "Isn't that the prettiest thing you ever saw?" she asked,
glancing at him over her shoulder]
"It is," said Percival, emphatically. His judgment about the
becomingness of the color had, us usual, been unerring.
"I should be no end grateful," he said, "if you'd take it off my hands.
My trunks are fearfully stuffed now."
"But I haven't any money," said Bobby, with characteristic frankness;
"besides, we don't need things like that in Cheyenne."
"Silly girl! Do you think I have turned merchant, and have got wares for
sale? The coat is for you."
Bobby gave a cry of delight, then she looked up dubiously.
"But is it all right for me to take a present like this? I never had
anything so big given me--yes, I did, too!" She laughed. "A fellow from
Medicine Bow sent me a barrel of mixed fruit once, with nuts and raisins
in between, and ten pounds of candy on top!"
"Then why scruple at my gift?"
Her brow clouded. "But you said girls oughtn't to take things from men
they weren't engaged to. You remember that day on deck you got me to
give back Andy's scarf-pin?"
Percival cleared his throat.
"Quite a different matter," he said; "now, between you and me--"
Bobby shook her head as she took off the coat.
"No, I guess not. I want it so bad I can taste it, but I think you'd
better keep it for somebody in the family."
Percival slipped the jade pendant into his waistcoat pocket, and tossed
the coat on a chair.
"As you like," he said. "Shall we go to the ball-room?"
In his secret soul he was inordinately gratified. Of course she should
not have accepted the coat, and he should not have tempted her. She had
done exactly right in firmly adhering to his former instructions.
Altogether she was a remarkable little person indeed.
The moment they appeared in the ballroom she was confiscated, and he had
a miserable quarter of an hour watching her whirl from one masculine arm
to another. For the first time dancing struck him as pernicious. He
declared that the clergy had something on its side when it denounced the
amusement as evil. He doubted gravely if he should ever permit a wife of
his to dance.
"Mr. Hascombe, aren't you going to ask me to dance?" It was Bobby who
had stopped before him, flushed and breathless.
"I don't dance at public balls," he said disapprovingly.
"Why not?" asked Bobby, in surprise.
"Hardly the thing. A person in my position, you know--"
"You mean because of the Honorable? How stupid! Let's pretend you aren't
one just for to-night!"
"But I don't dance these dances, you see."
"That doesn't matter; I'll teach you."
"Really, now, I can't make a spectacle of myself."
"Nobody wants you to. We'll practise out here in the loggia. Come
ahead!"
He was seized by two small, determined hands and drawn this way and
that, apparently without the slightest method.
"But I haven't the vaguest idea what to do with my feet," he protested
helplessly.
"Don't do anything with them; let them do something with you. Shut your
eyes and listen to the music; let it get into your bones, and the first
thing you know you will be doing it."
With British solemnity Percival closed his eyes and tried to feel the
music. Suddenly he was aware that he was moving in rhythm to the
insistent beat of the drum.
"That's it!" cried Bobby, excitedly. "You are doing the Grape-Vine; let
yourself go. That's it!"
So intent was he upon keeping out of time instead of in it, that he
was guided from the loggia into the ball-room before he knew it. His
awakening came when a firm hand was laid upon his shoulder. He stopped
indignantly. The ship's doctor had not only arrested the development of
his new-found talent, but was actually dancing off with his partner!
"Most unwarrantable impertinence!" he stormed to the Scotchman, whom he
joined at the door. "Clapped me on the shoulder quite as if I had been
under suspicion for felony. Almost expected to hear him say, 'My man,
you're wanted.' I shall demand satisfaction of the cub the instant the
dance is over."
The Scotchman laughed. "He meant ye no harm. It's a trick they have in
the States of changing partners. Watch the game; ye'll see."
"And I can take any man's partner away by simply laying my hand on his
shoulder?"
This changed the complexion of things considerably. The Honorable
Percival spent the remainder of the evening laying his hand upon the
shoulder of whosoever claimed Bobby for a dance.
It was remarkable with what facility he acquired the new steps. He knew
that he had a good figure and that he carried it with distinction. The
admiring glances that followed his entrance into any public assembly
made him pleasantly aware of the fact. To-night, however, if any of his
thoughts turned upon himself, they were but stragglers from the main
army that marched in solid file under Bobby's banner.
During the intervals when he could not dance with her he retired to
the loggia, and thought about her. She was not only the most beautiful
creature he had ever seen, but the most adorably responsive. He likened
her poetically to an Æolian harp and himself to the wind.
No one, not even his fond mother, had accepted him so implicitly at
his own valuation as Bobby. Other women frequently insisted upon their
own interpretations. He looked upon this as a form of disloyalty.
Lady Hortense had once decried his taste for Tennyson; that, and her
persistent use of a perfume which he disliked had been symbolic to him
of a difference in temperament. Bobby had no predilections for perfumes
or poets. She blindly accepted his judgment of all things, and if she
sometimes failed to conform to his wishes, it was through forgetfulness
and not opposition. He gloried in her plasticity; after all, was it not
among the chief of feminine virtues?
While he paced the loggia and thus recounted her charms, he became
increasingly intolerant of the fact that his Æolian harp was being swept
by _various_ winds. He thirsted for a complete monopoly of her
smiles, of all her glances, grave and gay, of the thousand and one
little looks and gestures that he had quite unwarrantably come to look
upon as his own.
After all, why should he consider his family before himself? Why should
he ever go back to England at all? It was the most daring thought he had
ever had, and for a moment it staggered him. Lines from "Locksley Hall"
began ringing in his ears:
"... Oh for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining-Orient when; my life began to heat:
Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shady, and palms in clusters, Knots of Paradise.
There the passions, cramp'd no longer, shall have scope and breathing
space;
I will take some savage woman--"
Of course, he told himself, Bobby wasn't exactly a savage woman; but
then again she was, you know, in a way. She was from the point of view
of Sister Cordelia. But why consult Sister Cordelia at all? Why not seek
some "blossomed bower in dark purple spheres of sea"? Not in China; it
was too beastly smelly. Not in Japan; mosquitos. Not in America; never!
It should be some South Sea Island, where they would dwell, "the world
forgetting, and by the world forgot."
Once an Englishman slips the leash of his sentiment and quotes even a
line of poetry, it carries him far afield. In this case it led Percival
a headlong chase over walls of tradition and barriers of pride. He
begrudged every moment that must elapse before he had Bobby to himself,
and told her of his great decision.
"But isn't it too late to be taking a walk?" she protested when the last
dance was over, and he was urging a turn on the bund.
"Just a breath of fresh air. Won't take five minutes. Where's your
wrap?"
"I haven't any but my steamer-coat. I don't suppose you could stand
that."
"You will wear the Manchu coat," said Percival, with tender authority;
"there's every reason why you should."
XIII
PERCIVAL PROCRASTINATES
The little park that stretched between the bund and the water-front way
deserted save for a few isolated couples who had strolled out from the
hotel to cool off after the heat of the ball-room. Percival and Bobby
found a vine-clad summer-house where they could watch the tall ships
riding at anchor in the bay, their riding-lights swaying amid the more
stationary stars. Closer to the water were the bobbing lights of the
sleeping junks, while behind them twinkled the myriad lights of that
vast native city the hem of whose garment they were merely touching.
The setting was all that Percival's fastidious taste could desire, but
now that he had "the time and the place and the loved one all together,"
he found an epicure's delight in lingering over his rapture. This hour
had a flavor, a bouquet, that no other hour would ever contain, and he
preferred to sip it deliriously moment by moment. He coaxed her to talk
at length about himself, to put into her own words the impressions he
had made upon her mentally, morally, and physically. He never tired of
beholding in the mirror of her mind the very images he had placed before
it.
"You are a perfect little wizard!" he exclaimed in ecstasy. "You read me
like a book. Quite sure you aren't cold!"
"No," said Bobby; "but I'm getting awfully sleepy."
His pride took instant alarm. After all, it was not the hour to press
his suit. He rose, and tenderly drew the shining folds of her wrap about
her.
"I shall take you in. Can't allow you to lose your roses, you know.
To-morrow I must take better care of you."
Bobby gave a sleepy little laugh.
"What is it!" he asked.
"I was just thinking how mad we are making the captain. He wouldn't
speak to me all through dinner."
"I shall have a word to say to the captain to-morrow that will quite
change his attitude."
"What sort of a word?"
"Can't you guess?"
Before Bobby could answer, their attention was arrested by angry shouts
in the street behind them. A drunken sailor, evidently from an English
gunboat, was in fierce altercation with his jinrikisha-man, and was
announcing to the world, in language compounded of all the oaths in his
vocabulary, that he wished to be condemned to Hades if any more
pumpkin-headed, pig-tailed Chinks got another bob out of his pocket.
Percival was for hurrying his precious charge past the belligerents and
into the hotel, but Bobby insisted upon seeing the end of it.
"That sailor is fixing to get into trouble," she cried. "He doesn't know
what he is doing or saying."
"I dare say he'll manage very well," said Percival, urging her on.
"But he _isn't_ managing, He's making the coolie furious. Don't let
him hit at him like that! See, he's caught hold of his queue!"
The patient Chinaman had received the supreme insult, and in a second he
had flashed a short knife from his belt, and was lunging at the stupid,
upturned face of the half-recumbent sailor.
Percival sprang forward and seized the descending arm. He was not quick
enough to arrest the force of the blow, but he succeeded in deflecting
its course, and the blade, which would have given the sailor a decent
burial at sea, sharply grazed Percival's wrist, and buried itself in the
side of the jinrikisha.
It was all so quickly done that by the time a crowd collected and the
big Sikh policeman arrived in his yellow clothes and huge striped turban
Percival had got Bobby safely into the hotel lobby. He was exasperated
beyond measure that this very evening, of all, should have ended in his
participation in a vulgar street brawl. So far he had succeeded in
keeping Bobby from knowing that he was wounded, but the beastly scratch
was bleeding furiously, and he had to keep his hand behind, him to
prevent her from seeing it.
They hurried through the empty lobby and down the long corridor that led
to the elevator. Bobby was full of excitement over the recent adventure
and the part Percival had played in it.
"My, but you were quick!" she said as they went up on the elevator. "I
had just time to shut my eyes and open them again, and it was all over."
"Nothing to speak of," said Percival, twisting his handkerchief tighter
around his throbbing wrist.
"But you don't mind my being proud of you, do you?" asked Bobby as the
elevator stopped at his floor. "When I see a man show courage like that,
I just feel as if--as if I'd like to squeeze him."
Percival's left hand shot out and caught hers to his lips.
"Why, Mr. Hascombe!" she cried "What's the matter with your arm? No,
I mean the other one."
"A mere scratch."
"But your sleeve's cut, and the handkerchief is all blood-stained. Why
didn't you tell me you were hurt?"
"I assure you it is nothing. Quite all right in the morning. Breakfast
with you at nine. Happy dreams!"
Bobby was not to be so easily put off. She insisted upon following him
out of the elevator and inspecting the wound,
"Why, it's dreadful!" she cried. "And it must have been bleeding like
this for five minutes! Quick! Where's your room?"
"But really, my dear girl, I can't allow this. You must get back into
the lift straight away and go up to your room."
"I sha'n't do anything of the sort until you get Judson or a doctor or
somebody."
Percival would have carried his point but for a certain dizziness that
had come over him. He put out a hand to steady himself.
"Give me your key!" he heard Bobby saying, and the next instant his door
was flung open, the lights were switched on, and he was staggering
blindly toward the couch at the foot of the bed. Then there was a
furious ringing of bells, a long wait, followed by the appearance of
a sleepy Chinese night watchman.
"Gentleman hurt!" cried Bobby. "Get a doctor! Send somebody up here
quick! Do you understand?"
"Me savvy," said the Chinaman, calmly. "Doctor no belong Astor Hotel.
All same belong Oliental Hotel."
"I don't care where he belongs," Bobby cried impatiently. "Get him over
the telephone. And send somebody up from the office, do you understand?"
"Oh, yes, me savvy," he said, with the imperturbability of his race.
Percival heard the man's footsteps dying in the distance, and he made a
mighty effort to rouse himself.
"Silly of me to behave like this. Quite all right now, thanks. You must
run away before any one comes."
"Why?" demanded Bobby.
"Looks rather queer your being here like this at midnight, you know.
Wouldn't compromise you for the world."
Bobby was standing at his dressing-table searching for something, and
she wheeled upon him indignantly.
"This is no time to be thinking about looks. You lie down and stop
talking. Hold your arm up straight, like that. Keep it that way until
I come."
He did as she told him, grasping his right wrist in his left hand; but
the bright-red blood continued to spurt through his fingers, showing no
signs of abating.
"If I could only find a string!" cried Bobby, tossing the contents of
his bag this way and that. "Here's the strap on your toilet-case;
perhaps it'll do."
She knelt beside the couch, and, ripping his sleeve to the elbow,
hastily wrapped the leather thong twice about his forearm and slipped
the strap into the buckle.
"I've got to hurt you," she said resolutely, pulling with nervous
strength.
"It's most awfully good of you," murmured Percival, wearily, setting his
teeth and closing his eyes. Despite the pain, the drowsiness was getting
the better of him. He felt himself sinking through space, away from the
world, from himself, and, worst of all, from the tender, reassuring
voice that kept whispering words of comfort in his ear.
From time to time he was aware of bellboys coming and going, and of
apparently futile inquiries for Judson, for the doctor, for Mrs. Weston,
for the captain. Then for a long time he was aware of nothing whatever.
A sudden sharp pain in his arm roused him, and he opened his eyes. Bobby
still knelt on the floor beside him, unflinchingly holding the strap in
place.
"I won't have this!" he cried, struggling to sit up. "Your lips are
trembling. It's making you ill."
She laid her free hand on his shoulder.
"Please lie still! They'll be here in a minute. I thought I heard the
elevator. It won't be much longer."
There was the sound of hurrying feet in the hall, and the next instant
a quick rap at the door. Bobby looked up with great relief as a burly
English physician bustled into the room.
"How long have you had the tourniquet on, Madam?" he asked, stripping
off his gloves and falling to work.
"The what?" said Bobby.
"The strap on his arm?"
"Oh, since a quarter past twelve." She got up from her knees stiffly,
and shook out the shining folds of the Manchu coat. "It was the only
thing I could think of; it's what the boys do back home for a
rattlesnake bite."
The doctor's glance expressed complete and unqualified approval, but
whether it was for her course of action or her very lovely and disturbed
appearance it would be hard to say. As she slipped out of the room he
turned to Percival.
"It's a severed artery, sir; no special harm done except the loss of
blood. A few days' rest--"
"But I am sailing in the morning," murmured Percival. "Must patch me up
by that time."
"We shall see. You don't seem to realize that you stood an excellent
chance of remaining permanently in Shanghai."
"You mean?"
"I mean that you owe your life to that plucky little wife of yours."
Percival's heart leaped at the word. "She's not my wife, Doctor," he
said, smiling feebly, "not yet."
XIV
NEPTUNE TAKES A HAND
The evolution of a hero is seldom a gradual process; he usually springs
into public favor suddenly and dramatically. Not so with the Honorable
Percival. He had to scramble ignominiously on all fours through a canvas
tunnel, he had to brave the smiles of the on-lookers while he learned
new steps on the ball-room floor, he had to participate in a street
fight and have an artery severed before he was accorded the honor of
a pedestal.
Bobby's graphic account of his defense of the drunken sailor, together
with his own vigorous disavowal of any heroism in the affair, won for
him a halo. After months of tedious anchorage in the dull harbor of
seclusion, he found himself once more afloat on a sea of approval,
tasting again the sweet savor of adulation, and spreading his sails to
catch each passing breath of admiration.
Reclining in his deck-chair, with his arm in a sling and a becoming
pallor suffusing his classic features, he became an object of the
greatest solicitude to his fellow-passengers. The fluttering attentions
he received warmed him into geniality, and in return he dispensed regal
favors. He allowed Mrs. Weston to consult him concerning her
presentation at court the following spring, he let Andy Black arrange
his tie, and permitted Elise Weston to cut the leaves of his magazine.
He graciously submitted to endless inquiries concerning his hourly
progress, and even went so far as to accept two cream peppermints from
the old missionary, who had acquired a new box.
The only drawback to this feast of brotherly love lay in the fact that
he could not obtain the tête-a-tête he so earnestly desired with Bobby
Boynton. She was always with him, to be sure, but so was everybody else,
especially Mrs. Weston, who had been officially appointed to stand guard
over the situation.
The captain had been stung to active measure by a chance remark of Andy
Black's when they were alone at breakfast.
"Accept my condolences," that youth had lugubriously remarked. "You have
missed the chance of your young life."
"How's that?" asked the captain.
"By not getting me for a son-in-law. Miss Bobby broke the news to me at
the dance last night."
"Did she give you a reason?" asked the captain, arresting his cup in
mid-air.
"I didn't need one. I've been rooming with it ever since we left
Honolulu."
"She didn't say it was--"
"Oh, she as good as told me. Same old chestnut I've been handed out all
my life. Said she cared for somebody else, but that she'd never forget
me. I can't see much satisfaction in occupying a pigeon-hole in a girl's
heart when, another fellow's got the key to it."
The captain, was concerned with something far more serious than Andy's
matrimonial failures.
"What makes you think it's Hascombe?" he asked.
"What makes everybody think so?" asked Andy. "What makes him think so
himself?"
The captain lost no time in finding Mrs. Weston, and laying the case
before her.
"He's got to be headed off," he said anxiously. "It 's getting serious."
"It certainly looks so after yesterday and last night. But I can't for
the life of me see why you oppose it. He's really a tremendous catch,
and it's no wonder Bobby's head is turned. We are all a bit daft over
him since he condescended to notice us."
"Suffering Moses!" exploded the captain. "Let any fool come along and
shed a few drops of blood, then kiss his hand to the grand stand, and
he's got the women at his feet! I thought Bobby had more sense than to
cotton to that gilded rooster. I've a good mind to lock her up in her
stateroom until we reach Hong-Kong."
Mrs. Weston shook her head and smiled.
"You can't manage her that way. She is the sweetest thing that ever was,
but she is the kind of girl that can't be forced."
"Well, she shall be!" cried the captain, with savage determination. "I
headed her off once, and I'll do it again. I tell you, I'd rather see
her dead than married to an Englishman."
"Why, Captain Boynton!"
"I would. It's the Lord's truth. Her mother before her got caught by
just such a high-headed British fool. She was welcome to him, and he to
her, though Heaven knows she paid for it. If I thought my girl was going
the same way--"
His square jaw quivered suddenly, and he turned away abruptly.
Mrs. Weston was wise enough to keep silent until he had mastered
himself, then she said kindly: