Several tugs were persuasively nudging the Clan Macgregor out from her
pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest
of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they
made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings
and pipings, while, like an elephant harried by terriers, the vast mass
slowly swung outward toward the open. From the pier there arose a
composite clamor of farewell.
The Tyro gazed down upon this lively scene with a feeling of loneliness.
No portion of the ceremonial of parting appertained personally to him.
He had had his fair fraction in the form of a crowd of enthusiastic
friends who came to see him off on his maiden voyage. They, however,
retired early, acting as escort to his tearful mother and sister who had
given way to uncontrollable grief early in the proceedings, on a theory
held, I believe, by the generality of womankind in the face of
considerable evidence to the contrary, that a first-time voyager seldom
if ever comes back alive. Lacking individual attention, the Tyro decided
to appropriate a share of the communal. Therefore he bowed and waved
indiscriminately, and was distinctly cheered up by a point-blank smile
and handkerchief flutter from a piquant brunette who liked his looks.
Most people liked his looks, particularly women.
In the foreground of the dock was an individual who apparently didn't.
He was a fashionable and frantic oldish-young man, who had burst through
the barrier and now jigged upon the pier-head in a manner not
countenanced by the Society for Standardizing Ballroom Dances. At
intervals he made gestures toward the Tyro as if striving, against
unfair odds of distance, to sweep him from the surface of creation. As
the Tyro had never before set eyes upon him, this was surprising. The
solution of the mystery came from the crowd, close-pressed about the
Tyro. It took the form of an unmistakable sniffle, and it somehow
contrived to be indubitably and rather pitifully feminine. The Tyro
turned.
At, or rather underneath, his left shoulder, and trying to peep over or
past it, he beheld a small portion of a most woe-begone little face,
heavily swathed against the nipping March wind. Through the beclouding
veil he could dimly make out that the eyes were swollen, the cheeks were
mottled; even the nose--with regret I state it--was red and puffy. An
unsightly, melancholy little spectacle to which the Tyro's young heart
went out in prompt pity. It had a habit of going out in friendly and
helpful wise to forlorn and unconsidered people, to the kind of folk
that nobody else had time to bother about.
"What a mess of a face, poor kiddy!" said the Tyro to himself.
From the mess came another sniffle and then a gurgle. The Tyro, with a
lithe movement of his body, slipped aside from his position of vantage,
and the pressure of the crowd brought the girl against the rail.
Thereupon the Seven Saltatory Devils possessing the frame of the frantic
and fashionable dock-dancer deserted it, yielding place to a demon of
vocality.
"I think he's calling to you," said the Tyro in the girl's ear.
The girl shook her head with a vehemence which imparted not so much
denial as an "I-don't-care-if-he-is" impression.
Stridently sounded the voice of distress from the pier. "Pilot-boat," it
yelled, and repeated it. "Pilot! Pilot! Come--back--pilot-boat."
Again the girl shook her head, this time so violently that her
hair--soft, curly, luxuriant hair--loosened and clouded about her
forehead and ears. In a voice no more than a husky, tremulous whisper,
which was too low even to be intended to carry across the widening
water-space, and therefore manifestly purposed for the establishment of
her own conviction, she said:
"I wo-won't. I _won't_. I WON'T!!!" At the third declaration she brought
a saber-edged heel down square upon the most afflicted toe of a very
sore foot which the Tyro had been nursing since a collision in the
squash court some days previous. Involuntarily he uttered a cry of
anguish, followed by a monosyllabic quotation from the original
Anglo-Saxon. The girl turned upon him a baleful face, while the
long-distance conversationalist on the dock reverted to his original
possession and faded from sight in a series of involuted spasms.
"_What_ did you say?" she demanded, still in that hushed and catchy
voice.
"'Hell,'" repeated the Tyro, in a tone of explication, "'is paved with
good intentions.' It's a proverb."
"I know that as well as you do," she whispered resentfully. "But what
has that to do with--with me?"
"Lord! What a vicious little spitfire it is," said he to himself. Then,
aloud: "It was my good intention to remove that foot and substitute the
other one, which is better able to sustain--"
"Was that your foot I stepped on?"
"It _was_. It is now a picturesque and obsolete ruin."
"It had no right to be there."
"But that's where I've always kept it," he protested, "right at the end
of that leg."
"If you want me to say I'm sorry, I won't, I _won't_--I--"
"Help!" cried the Tyro. "One more of those 'won'ts' and I'm a cripple
for life."
There was a convulsive movement of the features beneath the heavy veil,
which the Tyro took to be the beginning of a smile. He was encouraged.
The two young people were practically alone now, the crowd having moved
forward for sight of a French liner sweeping proudly up the river. The
girl turned her gaze upon the injured member.
"Did I really hurt you much?" she asked, still whispering.
"Not a bit," lied the Tyro manfully. "I just made that an excuse to get
you to talk."
"Indeed!" The head tilted up, furnishing to the Tyro the distinct
moulding, under the blurring fabric, of a determined and resentful chin.
"Well, I can't talk. I can only whisper."
"Sore throat?"
"No."
"Well, it's none of my business," conceded the Tyro. "But you rather
looked as if--as if you were in trouble, and I thought perhaps I could
help you."
"I don't want any help. I'm all right." To prove which she began to cry
again.
The Tyro led her over to a deck-chair and made her sit down. "Of course
you are. You just sit there and think how all-right you are for five
minutes and then you _will_ be all right."
"But I'm not going back. Never! Never!! _Nev-ver!!!_"
"Certainly not," said the Tyro soothingly.
"You speak to me as if I were a child!"
"So you are--almost."
"That's what they all think at home. That's why I'm--I'm running away
from them," she wailed, in a fresh access of self-commiseration.
"Running away! To Europe?"
"Where did you think this ship was bound for?"
"But--all alone?" queried the other, thunderstruck.
"All alone?" She contrived to inform her whisper with a malicious
mimicry of his dismay. "I suppose the girls you know take the whole
family along when they run away. Idiot!"
"Go ahead!" he encouraged her. "Take it out on me. Relieve your
feelings. You can't hurt mine."
"I haven't even got a maid with me," mourned the girl. "She got left.
F-f-father will have a fu-fu-fit!"
"Father was practicing for it, according to my limited powers of
observation, when last seen."
"What! Where did you see him?"
"Wasn't it father who was giving the commendable imitation of a whirling
dervish on the pier-head?"
"Heavens, no! That's the--the man I'm running away from."
"The plot thickens. I thought it was your family you were eluding."
"Everybody! Everything! And I'm _never_ coming back. There's no way they
can get me now, is there?"
A reiterated word of the convulsive howler on the dock had stuck in the
Tyro's mind. "What about the pilot-boat?"
"Oh! Could they? What shall I do? I _won't_ go back. I'll jump overboard
first. And you do nothing but stand there like a ninny."
"Many thanks, gentle maiden," returned her companion, unperturbed, "for
this testimonial of confidence and esteem. With every inclination to aid
and abet any crime or misdemeanor within reach, I nevertheless think I
ought to be let in on the secret before I commit myself finally."
"It--it's that Thing on the dock."
"So you led me to infer."
"He wants to marry me."
"Well, America is the land of boundless ambitions," observed the young
man politely.
"But they'll make me marry him if I stay," came the half-strangled
whisper. "I'm engaged to him, I tell you."
"No; you didn't tell me anything of the sort. Why, he's old enough to be
your father."
"Older!" she asseverated spitefully. "And hatefuller than he is old."
"Why do such a thing?"
"I didn't do it."
"Then he did it all himself? I thought it took two to make an
engagement."
"It does. Father was the other one."
"Oh! Father is greatly impressed with our acrobatic friend's eligibility
as son-in-law?"
"Well, of course, he's got plenty of money, and a splendid position, and
all that. And I--I--I didn't exactly say 'No.' But when I saw it in the
newspapers, all spread out for everybody to read--"
"Hello! It got into the papers, did it?"
"Yesterday morning. Father put it in; I _know_ he did. I cried all
night, and this morning I had Marie pack my things, and I made a rush
for this old ship, and they didn't have anything for me but a stuffy
little hole 'way down in the hold somewhere, and I wish I were dead!"
"Oh, cheer up!" counseled the Tyro. "I've got an awfully decent
stateroom--123 D, and if you want to change--"
"Why, I'm 129 D. That's the same kind of room in the same passage. Do
you call _that_ fit to live in?"
Now the Tyro is a person of singularly equable temperament. But to have
an offer which he had made only with self-sacrificing effort thus
cavalierly received by a red-nosed, blear-eyed, impudent little
chittermouse (thus, I must reluctantly admit, did he mentally
characterize his new acquaintance), was just a bit too much.
"You don't have to accept the offer, you know," he assured her. "I only
made it to be offensive. And as I've apparently been successful beyond
my fondest hopes, I will now waft myself away."
There was some kind of struggle in which the lachrymose maiden's whole
anatomy seemed involved, and then a gloved hand went out appealingly.
"Meaning that you're sorry?" inquired the Tyro sternly.
Some sounds there are which elude the efforts of the most
onomatopoeic pen. Still, as nearly as may be--
"Buh!" said the damsel. "Buh--huh--_huh!_"
"Oh, in that case." The Tyro turned back.
There was a long pause, while the girl struggled for self-command,
during which her squire had time to observe with some surprise that she
had a white glove on her left hand and a tan one on her right, and that
her apparel seemed to have been put on without due regard to the
cardinal points of the compass. Through the veil she perceived and
interpreted his appraisal.
"I'm a dowdy frump!" she lamented, half-voiced. "I dressed myself while
Marie was packing. But you needn't be so--so supercilious about it."
"I'm not," protested he, conscience-stricken.
"You are! When you look at me that way I hate you! I'm not sorry I was
nasty to you. I'm glad! I wish I'd been nastier!"
The Tyro bent upon her a fascinated but baleful regard. "Angel child,"
said he in sugared accents, "appease my curiosity. Answer me one
question."
"I won't. What is it?"
"Did you ever have your ears boxed?"
"Never!" she said indignantly.
"I thought as much."
"You'd like to do it, perhaps."
"I'd love to. It would do me--I mean you--so much good."
"Maybe I'll let you if you'll help me get away. I know they'll find me!"
At the prospect the melancholy one once more abandoned herself to the
tragedy of existence. "And you don't do a thing but m-m-make fu-fu-fun
of me."
Contrition softened the heart of the Tyro. "Oh, look here, Niobe," he
began.
"My name _isn't_ Niobe!"
"Well, your nature's distinctly Niobish. I've got to call you
something."
"You haven't! You haven't got to ever speak to me again. They'll find
me, and catch me, and send me back, and I'll marry that--that
_Creature_, if that's what you want."
This was the _argumentum ad hominem_ with a vengeance. "_I_ want? What
on earth have I got to do with it?"
"Nothing! Nobody has anything to do with it. Nobody gives a--a--a _darn_
for me. Oh, I wish I were back home!"
"Now you're talking sense. The pilot-boat is your play."
"Oh! And you said you'd help me." And then the last barrier gave way,
and the floods swept down and immersed speech for the moment.
"Oh, come! Brace up, little girl." His voice was all kindness now. "If
you're really bound to get away--"
"I am," came the muffled voice.
"But have you got any place to go?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"My married sister's in London."
"Truly?"
"I can show you a cablegram if you don't believe me."
"That's all right, then. I'll take a chance. Now for one deep, dark, and
deadly plot. If the pilot-boat is after you, they'll look up your name
and cabin on the passenger list."
"I didn't give my real name."
"Oho! Well, your father might wire a description."
"It's just the kind of thing he would do."
"Therefore you'd better change your clothes."
"No. I'd better not. This awful mess is a regular disguise for me."
"And if you could contrive to stop crying--"
"I'm going to cry," said the young lady, with conviction, "all the way
over."
"You'll be a cheerful little shipmate!"
"Don't you concern yourself about that," she retorted. "After the pilot
leaves, you needn't have me on your mind at all."
"Thank you. Well, suppose you join me over in yonder secluded corner of
the deck in about two hours. Is there anybody on board that knows you?"
"How do I know? There might be."
"Then stay out of the way, and keep muffled up as you are now. Your own
mother wouldn't recognize you through that veil. In fact I don't suppose
I'd know you myself, but for your voice."
"Oh, I don't always whisper. But if I try to talk out loud my throat
gets funny and I want to c-c-cry--"
"Quit it! Stop. Brace up, now. We'll bluff the thing through somehow.
Just leave it to me and don't worry."
"And now," queried the Tyro of himself, as he watched the forlorn little
figure out of sight, "what have I let myself in for this time?"
With a view to gathering information about the functions, habits, and
capacities of a pilot-boat, he started down to the office and was seized
upon the companionway by a grizzled and sunbaked man of fifty who
greeted him joyously.
"Sandy! Is it yourself? Well met to you!"
"Hello, Dr. Alderson," returned the young man with warmth. "Going over?
What luck for me!"
"Why? Need a chaperon?"
"A cicerone, anyway. It's my first trip, and I don't know a soul
aboard."
"Oh, you'll know plenty before we're over. A maiden voyager is a sort of
pet aboard ship, particularly if he's an unattached youth. My first was
thirty years ago. This is my twenty-seventh."
"You must know all about ships, then. Tell me about the pilot."
"What about him? He's usually a gay old salt who hasn't been out of
sight of land for--"
"That isn't what I want to know. Does he take people back with him?"
"Hello! What's this? Don't want to back out already, do you?"
"No. It isn't I."
"Somebody want to go back? That's easily arranged."
"No. They don't want to go back. Not if they can help it. But could word
be got to the pilot to take any one off?"
"Oh, yes. If it were sent in time. A telegram to Quarantine would get
him, up to an hour or so after we cast off. What's the mystery, Sandy?"
"Tell you later. Thanks, ever so much."
"I'll have you put at my table," called the other after him, as he
descended the broad companionway.
So the pilot-boat scheme was feasible, then. If the unknown weeper's
father had prompt notice--from the disciple of Terpsichore, for
example--he might get word to the pilot and institute a search.
Meditating upon the appearance and behavior of the dock-dancer, the Tyro
decided that he'd go to any lengths to see the thing through just for
the pleasure of frustrating him.
"Though what on earth he wants to marry her for, _I_ don't see," he
thought. "She ought to marry an undertaker."
And he sat down to write his mother a pilot-boat letter, assuring her
that he had thus far survived the perils of the deep and had already
found a job as knight-errant to the homeliest and most lugubrious girl
on the seven seas. At the warning call for the closing of the mails he
hastened to the rendezvous on deck. She was there before him, still
muffled up, still swollen of feature, and still, as he indignantly put
it to himself, "blubbering."
Meantime there had reached the giant ship Clan Macgregor a message
signed by a name of such power that the whole structure officially
thrilled to it from top to bottom. The owner of the name demanded the
instant return, intact and in good order, C.O.D., of a valuable
daughter, preferably by pilot-boat, but, if necessary, by running the
ship aground and sending said daughter ashore in a breeches-buoy, or by
turning back and putting into dock again. In this assumption there was
perhaps some hyperbole. But it was obvious from the stir of officialdom
that the signer of the demand wanted his daughter very much and was
accustomed to having his wants respectfully carried out. One feature of
the message would have convinced the Tyro, had he seen it, of the
fatuity of fatherhood. It described the fugitive as "very pretty."
The search was thorough, rigid, and quite unavailing. The reason why it
was unavailing was this: At the moment when that portion of the chase to
which the promenade deck was apportioned, consisting of the second
officer, the purser, and two stewards, approached the secluded nook
where the Tyro stood guardian above the feminine Fount of Tears, they
beheld and heard only a young man admonishing a stricken girl in
unmistakably fraternal terms:
"Now, Amy, you might just as well stop that sniveling. [The Tyro was
taking a bit of revenge on the side.] You can't change your stateroom.
There isn't another to be had on board. And if it's good enough for
Mother, I think it ought to be good enough for you. Do have some
gumption, Amy, and cut out the salty-tear business. Come on down and
eat."
The pursuit passed on, and an hour later the pilot-boat chugged away
passengerless; for even the mightiest cannot hold indefinitely an ocean
liner setting out after a possible record. Almost at the moment that the
man of power received a message stating positively that his daughter was
not on the Clan Macgregor that perverse little person was saying to her
preserver, who--foolish youth--had expected some expression of
appreciation:--
"What do you mean by calling me Amy? I _hate_ the name."
"Short for 'amiability,' your most obvious quality."
"You're a perfect _pig_!" retorted the lady with conviction.
The Tyro made her a low bow. "Oh, pattern of all the graces," said he,
"I accept and appreciate the appellation. The pig is a praiseworthy
character. The pig suffereth long and is kind. The pig is humble, pious,
a home-lover and a home-stayer. You never heard of a pig changing his
heart and running away across the seas on twelve hours' notice, because
things didn't go exactly to suit him. Did you, now? The pig is mild of
temper and restrained of speech. He always thinks twice before he
grunts. To those that use him gently the pig is friendly and
affectionate. Gratitude makes its home in that soft bosom. Well has the
poet sung:--
"How rarer than a serpent's tooth
It is to find a thankless pig!
"The pig does not grouch nor snap nor stamp upon the feet of the
defenseless. Finally and above all, he does not give way to useless
tears and make red the lovely pinkness of his shapely nose. Proud am I
to be dubbed the Perfect Pig."
"_Oh!_" said the tearful damsel, and potential murder informed the
monosyllable.
"See here," said the Tyro persuasively: "tell me, why are you so cross
with me?"
"Because you pitied me."
"Anybody would. You look so helpless and miserable."
"I'm not muh-muh-miserable!"
"I beg your pardon. Of course you're not. Any one could see that."
"I _am_. But I don't care. I _won't_ be pitied. How dare you pity me! I
hate people that--that go around pitying other people."
"I'll promise never to do it again. Only spare my life this time. Now
I'm going to go away and stop bothering you. But if you find things
getting too dull for you during the voyage, I'll be around somewhere
within call. Good-bye, and good luck."
A little hand went out to him--impulsively.
"I _am_ sorry," came the whisper--it was almost free of tragic effect
this time--"and I really think you--you're rather a dear."
The Tyro marched away in the righteous consciousness of having done his
full duty by helpless and unattractive girlhood. The girl retired
presently to her cabin, and made a fair start on her announced policy of
crying all the way from America to Europe. When, however, the ship met
with a playful little cross-sea and began to bobble and weave and splash
about in the manner of our top-heavy leviathans of travel, she was
impelled to take thought of her inner self, and presently sought the
fresh and open air of the deck lest a worse thing befall her. There in a
sheltered angle she snuggled deep in her chair, and presently, braced by
the vivifying air, was by way of almost enjoying herself. And thither
fate drove the Tyro, with relentless purpose, into her clutches.
With his friend Alderson, who had retrieved him late in the afternoon
after he had unpacked, the Tyro was making rather uncertain weather of
it along the jerking deck, when an unusually abrupt buck-jump executed
by the Macgregor sent him reeling up against the cabin rail at the angle
behind which the girl sheltered.
"Let's stop here for a minute," panted Alderson. "Haven't got my
sea-legs yet." There was a pause. "Did I see you making yourself
agreeable to a young person of the dangerous sex a couple of hours ago?"
"Agreeable? Well, judging by results, no. I doubt if Chesterfield
himself could have made himself agreeable to Little Miss Grouch."
"Miss _Who_?"
"Little Miss Grouch. Don't know her real name. But that's good enough
for descriptive purposes. She's the crossest little patch that ever grew
up without being properly spanked."
"Where did you run across her?"
"Oh, she wrecked my pet toe with a guillotine heel because I ventured to
sympathize with her."
"Oh," commented the experienced Alderson. "Sympathy isn't in much demand
when one is seasick."
"It wasn't seasickness. It was weeps for the vanished fatherland; such
blubbery weeps! Poor little girl!" mused the Tyro. "She isn't much
bigger than a minute, and _so_ forlorn, and _so_ red-nosed, and _so_
homely, you couldn't help but--"
At this moment a drunken stagger on the part of the ship slewed the
speaker halfway around. He found himself looking down upon a
steamer-chair, wherein lay a bundle swathed in many rugs. From that
bundle protruded a veiled face and the outline of a swollen nose, above
which a pair of fixed eyes blazed, dimmed but malevolent, into his.
"Er--ah--oh," said the Tyro, moving hastily away. "If you'll excuse me I
think I'll just step over the rail and speak to a fish I used to know."
"What's the matter?" inquired Alderson suspiciously, following him. "Not
already!"
"Oh, no. Not that. Worse. That bundle almost under our feet when I
spoke--that was Little Miss Grouch."
Alderson took a furtive glance. "She's all mummied up," he suggested;
"maybe she didn't hear."
"Oh, yes, she did. Trust my luck for that. And I said she was homely.
And she is. Oh, Lord, I wouldn't have hurt her poor little feelings for
anything."
"Don't you be too sure about her being so homely. Any woman looks a
fright when she's all bunged up from crying."
"What's the difference?" said the Tyro miserably. "A pretty girl don't
like to be called homely any more than a homely one."
"There's where you're off, my son," returned Alderson. "She can summon
her looking-glass as a witness in rebuttal."
"Anyway, I've put my foot in it up to the knee!"
"Oh, go up to-morrow when she's feeling better and tell her you were
talking about the ship's cat."
"I'd show better sense by keeping out of her way altogether."
"You'll never be able to do that," said the sea-wise Alderson. "Try to
avoid any one on shipboard and you'll bump into that particular person
everywhere you go, from the engine-room to the forepeak. Ten to one she
sits next to you at table."
"I'll have my seat changed," cried the other in panic. "I'll eat in my
cabin. I'll fast for the week."
"You be a game sport and I'll help you out," promised his friend. "All
hands to repel boarders! Here she comes!"
Little Miss Grouch bore down upon them with her much-maligned nose in
the air. As she maneuvered to pass, the ship, which had reached the
climax of its normal roll to port, paused, and then decided to go a
couple of degrees farther; in consequence of which the young lady fled
with a stifled cry of fury straight into the Tyro's waiting arms.
Alderson, true to his promise, extracted her, set her on her way, and
turned anxiously to his young friend.
"Did she bite you?" he inquired solicitously.
"No. You grabbed her just in time. This affair," he continued with
profound and wretched conviction, "is going to be Fate with a capital
F."
Meantime, in the seclusion of her cabin, the little lady was maturing
the plot of deep and righteous wrath. "Wait till to-morrow," she
muttered, hurling her apparel from her and diving into her bunk. "I'll
show him," she added, giving the pillow a vicious poke. "He said I was
homely! (Thump!) And red-nosed. (Plop!) And cross and ugly! (Whack!) And
he called me Little Miss Grouch. And--and _gribble_ him!" pursued the
maligned one, employing the dreadful anathema of her schoolgirl days.
"He pitied me. Pitied! Me! Just wait. I'll be seasick and have it over
with! And I'll cry until I haven't got another tear left. And then I'll
fix _him_. He's got nice, clear gray eyes, too," concluded the little
ogress with tigerish satisfaction. "Ouch! where's the bell!"
For several hours Little Miss Grouch carried out her programme
faithfully and at some pains. Then there came to her the fairy
godmother, Sleep, who banished the goblins, Grief and Temper, and worked
her own marvelous witchery upon the weary girl to such fair purpose that
she awoke in the morning transformed beyond all human, and more
particularly all masculine, believing. One look in her glass assured her
that the unfailing charm had worked.
She girded up her hair and went forth upon the war-path of her sex.