SALT WATER
It was the tenth day of April. A great ship was making ready to sail;
she lay like some inert monster at her pier, while all about her, within
and without, was apparent commotion yet really ordered haste, the
customary scene of bustling activity.
Few passengers had yet arrived, for the time of sailing was still some
hours away. One party of three, however, had just driven down to the
very gangway, allowed by some special privilege a closer approach than
most at this hour. The reason was apparent when the party alighted, for
one of its number was clearly an invalid, a frail-looking man with curly
gray hair, who leaned upon the arm of a much younger man with a keen,
distinguished face. The third person was a young woman, the sort of
young woman who looks as if no buffeting wind could blow her away,
because she would be sure to face it with delight, her eager face only
glowing the brighter for the conflict.
"This is the advantage of coming early, isn't it?" said Mrs. Jefferson
Craig, with a look of congratulation at her husband. "It's not much as
it was when we saw Mr. and Mrs. Brandt off last week. You can walk on
board as slowly as you please, Father Davy; there's no one to push."
Mr. David Warne was drawing deep breaths of the salty air, with its
peculiar mixture of odours. He was also gazing about him with delighted
eyes, seeming in no haste to cross the gangway.
"When I was a boy," he said to his daughter, who remained close at his
side, "I lived, as you know, in a seaport town. Ever since I came away,
it seems to me, I have been longing to smell that salty, marshy, briny
smell again. It takes me back--how it takes me back!"
"The voyage is going to do you worlds of good," exulted Georgiana, her
eyes bright with hope. "Jefferson was quite right: the winter at home,
to help the poor spine; now the sea air, and the complete change, to
make you strong. We'll have you marching back and forth with the other
learned men, under the lindens at Trinity, while we are in Oxford--hands
clasped behind your back, impressive nose in air--the very picture of a
gentleman and a scholar."
"As if there were anything of the scholar about me," murmured Mr. Warne,
smiling at this picture of his undistinguished self. "Well, my children,
I suppose you are ready to go on, and I imagine we are not wanted in the
way here. Let us proceed across that little bridge, and then we can
look back at all this interesting activity."
Half an hour later, having taken possession of their staterooms, the
party returned to the deck, where Georgiana and her husband established
Mr. Warne in his chair, well tucked up in rugs--for the April air though
balmy was treacherous. They then fell to pacing up and down, according
to the irresistible tendency of the human foot the moment that it treads
the deck.
"He seems deliciously happy, doesn't he?" said Georgiana's voice in her
husband's ear. "If he were twenty-six instead of fifty-six he couldn't
enter into it all with more zest. How pleased he was with Mrs. Brandt's
flowers, and how dear it was of her to send them to him!"
"However happy he may be," declared Jefferson Craig, "it's not within
the bounds of possibility that he is so happy as we!"
"Oh, of course not!" agreed Georgiana to this decidedly boyish speech.
She realized suddenly how quickly the sense of relaxation from care was
beginning to show in her husband. Her hand within his arm gave it a warm
little squeeze. "That couldn't be expected. To be torn apart, at any and
all hours, and kept apart day after day, just when we most want to be
together--and then to come down to a big ship and know that no telephone
bell can ring, nobody can make a single demand upon us that can prevent
our being by ourselves--well, words simply can't express how wonderful
it seems!"
"It _is_ wonderful, and we'll make the most of it. There's just one
thing I want to get out of this vacation in the way of work, and then
all the rest of it shall be at your service."
"The book?"
"The book. How did you guess? I haven't spoken of it."
"No, but I've seen you looking wistfully at your notebook time and
again, and guessed what you were thinking of. Well, we can make it fly.
I'm ready for you."
Georgiana plunged her hand into a small bag she carried on her arm, and
brought forth a notebook--of her own. She produced a pencil. "You may as
well begin to dictate now," she said demurely. "What's the use of losing
time? Just don't go too fast, that's all."
He stared at her. "What do you mean, dear? You don't know shorthand."
"Don't I? Well, perhaps I can write fast enough in long hand. Try me."
"My idea is," he said, "that we might spend a couple of hours every
morning, and another couple in the afternoon, if you don't mind, and
really get ahead quite a bit while we are at sea--provided you prove a
good sailor, which I have an idea you will if---- See here, what are you
doing? You're not taking that down in signs!" He looked over her
shoulder at the notebook, where a series of dashes, angles, hooks and
dots was forming with great rapidity. "You don't mean to say----"
"No, I mean to write, and let you do the saying. Go ahead, sir--only be
sure you say something worth while."
"But--you didn't have that accomplishment when we worked together last
summer."
"How I did wish I had, though! You kept insisting that I was doing all I
could for you by copying endlessly, but I knew perfectly well that if I
were a stenographer you could accomplish just three times as much in a
given time as you did. You know perfectly well you only took that course
to give a poor girl the chance to earn. If it hadn't been for helping me
you would have had a secretary at your elbow, after you got to the point
of needing him."
"I took that course, as you well know, because I wanted you at my elbow.
If you had been able to write only a word a minute, I should have wanted
you there just the same."
She gave him a merry, understanding look, then read him the words he had
just spoken from her book.
"Where in the world did you learn, and how?" he demanded. "And how have
you become so proficient in so short a time?"
"I'm afraid it's rather blundering work yet, but it will grow better all
the time. Why, I've been taking lessons all winter, dear sir, at the
best shorthand school in the city. I made up my mind that it was the
thing I could do that would be of most use to you. It's a shame that a
man who is doing the original work that you are shouldn't have time to
give other people more benefit of it. It seemed to me you could write an
important monograph in an hour, if you just had me at hand to take down
the words of wisdom as they fell from your learned lips. Why you haven't
used a secretary before for this purpose I don't know, but I certainly
am glad you haven't. It insures me the position."
If she had wanted a reward for long and severe labours she had it in his
look. "Other men dictate such papers," he said, "but somehow it has
never seemed to me I could. I tried it once or twice and didn't get on
at all as I did when I had the pen in my fingers. But with you, it may
be different."
"It will be different," she told him confidently. "You're going to
become used to my being so much a part of you that you can think as if
you were using my brains--or I were using yours, which would be more to
the purpose, I admit. Oh, we're going to accomplish all sorts of things
together."
He looked down into her eager face, glowing with colour, the dark eyes
apparently seeing visions which gave them keen delight. "You are a
partner worth having," he said, much moved. "I knew you would be, and
it's seemed to me all winter that no wife could be more of one. But if
you're going to add this to your other activities you will make yourself
even more indispensable than you already are, which is saying much."
She could hardly wait until she had made a trial of this new form of
partnership. The ship had barely turned her face out to sea, parting
company with her pilot, before the work began.
Doctor Craig had secured a small suite of staterooms opening upon a
central sitting-room, and here he and Georgiana could be sure of much
time to themselves. While the pair were engaged Mr. Warne was supremely
content to lie in a sheltered corner of the deck, book in hand, reading
or watching the ever new glory of sea and sky, or talking with some
fellow passenger who possessed intelligence enough to discover what
manner of man was here.
When Georgiana, ardent as a child in her joy over what was to be
revealed, unpacked a small, portable typewriter and set it upon the
table of the sitting-room, Jefferson Craig suddenly caught her in his
arms.
"My blessed girl," he cried, "this, too? What haven't you done with
your winter, when I thought you were spending your time getting
acquainted with New York, as I meant you to do? You and Mrs. Brandt were
supposed to be seeing everything worth seeing, on those morning drives.
Were you shut up in your room all that time learning machines?"
"No, indeed. Do you imagine I made up all the stories I told you of
those expeditions? We did all that, and this, too. I spent only an hour
each morning at the school; the rest of the study I put in at all hours.
Many of them were when I was waiting for you, Doctor Craig, to take me
to a dinner or the opera. My notebook lived with me as if it had been a
treasure I couldn't have out of my sight. It was just that. I never was
so proud of anything I learned at college as I was when the gruff man
who had my special training in charge told me I would make a
stenographer. Not all of them did, he said. Some never could get hold of
it, or acquire any speed or accuracy. Just give me a year, and I'll put
down your thoughts before you think them!"
"I haven't a doubt of it," he agreed, with a laugh of amusement and
delight.
Thus the work began, and thus it proceeded, with only one day's
interruption when, in mid-ocean, came twenty-four hours of moderately
bad weather.
To Georgiana's joy she proved herself the sailor her husband had
prophesied, but her father was not so fortunate, and she promptly
tucked him in his berth, where she kept him fairly comfortable until the
rough seas quieted. When he was recovered he lay for one morning on the
couch in the sitting-room, while the two workers resumed their task.
Here he seemed to slumber much of the time, but in reality he kept
rather a close watch on the absorbed pair, whom he had never before seen
thus engaged, much as he had heard of their labours.
Looking up suddenly Georgiana discovered the blue eyes upon her, and
when her flying fingers next stopped she put a question: "A penny for
your thoughts, Father Davy. Don't we work together rather well, in spite
of my being such a novice?"
"You two pull excellently well in double harness, it seems to me," he
responded. "I can't see that either is taking all the load while the
other soldiers and lets the traces slack."
Doctor Craig looked around at him. "She's always ahead by a pair of ears
at least," he declared with a laugh.
"But I hear his steady pound--pound--at my side, and I'm afraid he's
going to get a shoulder ahead," his wife explained.
The interest the pair excited on shipboard was greater than Georgiana
guessed, though Doctor Craig was quite aware of it. Somehow or other the
word had gone around, as words do go in a ship's company, as to the
literary labours they were engaged in, and as Jefferson Craig's name was
one known to more people than Georgiana had the slightest notion of,
there was cause enough for the attention given them. Craig's noteworthy
personality--one which marked him anywhere as a man of intellect and
action--Georgiana's fresh young beauty, her spontaneous low laughter as
she paced the deck at her husband's side, her readiness to make friends
with those whose looks and bearing attracted her--these attributes made
the Craigs the target for all eyes.
"I never saw people who looked so absolutely content," fretfully
murmured one swathed mummy in a deck chair to another, as the pair
passed them, on the tenth round of a long tramp, one gray morning when
the wind was more than ordinarily chill. The speaker's black eyes,
heavily lidded in a pale, discontented face, followed the Craigs out of
sight as she spoke.
"Oh, they're on their honeymoon--that accounts for it," replied the
other, languidly. Her glance also had followed the walkers.
"No, they're not--I've told you that before. They were married last
December--plenty of time for the glamour to wear off. They act as if
they never expected it to wear off. Sue Burlison must hate to look at
them--she certainly had her mind made up to marry Jefferson Craig, if it
could be done."
"So did Ursula Brandywine," contributed the languid one.
"You could say that of a dozen--twenty. I presume there are at least
four disappointed mothers on board, besides Jane Burlison. Not that any
of them ever had much encouragement from him--I'll say that for him.
They'd about given him up as hopeless when he went off and married this
country girl. One thing is certain--in spite of her fine clothes she
hasn't the air his wife ought to have--she's not his equal."
"What's that you say?" The questioner was a sallow-faced youth upon the
black-eyed lady's other side. Sunk deep in a fur-lined coat, his cap
pulled low over his eyes--which were precisely like hers, even to the
expression of discontent--he had seemed for the last hour to be
slumbering. But at the moment he looked quite wide awake, as he turned
his head toward his mother and challenged her latest statement. "What's
that you say?" he repeated, in her own acrimonious tone.
"Oh, have you come to at last?" she inquired. "It is quite impossible to
remember that though you sleep for hours you are liable to wake in time
to contradict me on any point whatever. In this case it is of no
consequence what I may have said."
"You were handing us the hot dope about Mrs. Craig's not being in the
same class with Dr. Jeff. It certainly does take a woman to stick her
claws into another woman's fur. There's one thing I can tell you--there
isn't a man on board who'd agree with you. If she's a country girl--you
can say good-bye for me to the little old town. I'm going to take to
rural life till I find another. Talk about peaches and cream!"
"I believe I did not mention her complexion," his mother observed
coldly.
"Neither did your little son--though it would bear mentioning. I should
say yes! You said she hadn't any air. Jupiter--there she comes now. No
air!"
He subsided into his high-turned fur collar but his eyes watched
intently as the Craigs, still walking briskly after at least an hour's
exercise, came up the deck from the stern. His mother, on the contrary,
let her drooping lids fall indifferently. The moment they were out of
possible hearing the young man sat up.
"By Jove, if you call that no air, tell the grande dames to get a move
on. She walks like a young goddess--that's what."
"Silly boy! Nobody is talking of her face or her gait. If you don't know
what I mean, no one can tell you."
"Oh, I know what you mean," her son assured her. "I get you. What I say
is--you don't get _her_! Jefferson Craig's the one who gets her--lucky
chap! Maybe he doesn't know it--oh, no! Maybe not!" And turning his
back he once more appeared to slumber.
It was fortunate for Georgiana that she never even imagined such
comments, though she passed these rows of critical eyes a hundred times
a day, sat at table with people who were keenly observant of her every
act and word, and spent some reluctant hours in the society of those who
strove to cultivate her for their own blasé enjoyment. She only knew
that among the company she met a number of interesting men and women,
with whom she and her husband were thoroughly congenial, and that it did
not matter in the least about the rest. If those whom she liked so much,
and with whom she could talk with the greatest zest, turned out to be
the men and women of scientific or literary achievement, this seemed
only natural to the college-bred girl, and she cared not at all that she
did not get on so easily with those whose distinction lay in purely
social or financial lines.
During the winter just past her experience had been much the same, in a
larger way. Her husband's acquaintance was naturally a large one, but
the circle of his real friends was bound almost wholly by these same
congenialities of mind and tastes. Georgiana had met and been
entertained by many people whose names stood high on the list of the
distinguished, though their personal fortunes were small, and their
social activities were ignored in the society columns of the Sunday
press. A college president, several famous surgeons, not a few noted
authors of scientific books, as well as certain social workers, and two
or three clergymen--these, with their wives and families, were the sort
of people who gave to Georgiana Craig a hearty and sincere welcome,
recognizing her at once as one who belonged to them. It was small wonder
that the young wife, trained in a school of life in which nothing
counted except worth and ability, found no lack, nor thought of sighing
for the privilege her husband could easily have given her, had he cared
for it himself, of mingling with a quite different class, that of the
rich and gay who cared for little except that which could give them the
most powerfully emotional reactions in the way of diversion,
acquisition, or notoriety.
So they continued to work and walk their joyously contented way across
the wide Atlantic during the six days between port and port. Georgiana
enjoyed every hour, from that early morning one in which she first came
on deck, running up with her husband to breathe deeply of the
stimulating sea breeze before breakfasting, to the latest one, when,
furry coat drawn hurriedly on over her pretty evening frock, her dark
hair lightly confined under a gauzy scarf, she with Craig and a merry
half-dozen of the evening's group came up again upon a deserted deck,
to "blow the society fog out of their lungs," as one young biologist of
coming reputation put it, in the silvery April moonlight, with only a
few similarly inclined spirits to share with them the big empty spaces.
"I shall really be sorry to land to-morrow," sighed Georgiana, leaning
upon the rail on the last night of the voyage, and staring ahead toward
the quarter where her husband had just indicated they would be seeing
land when they came up in the morning. "It has been so perfect, this
being off between the sea and the sky together. When shall I ever forget
this first voyage? It's a dream come true."
"You will enjoy the second one just as much, for you're a born sailor,
and there'll be a long succession of voyages for you to look back upon
by and by. Not just my annual pilgrimages to foreign clinics, but
journeys to the ends of the earth if you like. Will that suit you,
eager-eyed one?"
"Suit me? Oh, wonderful to think of! Am I eager-eyed really? I try so
hard to cultivate that beautiful calm of manner I admire so much in
other people. Haven't I acquired a bit of it yet?"
"A beautiful calm of manner--all that could be desired. But your eyes
still suggest that you're standing on tiptoe, with your face lighted by
the dawn," Craig answered contentedly. "Heaven forbid you ever lose that
look! It's what gives the zest to my life."