Rain, fog, mist, drizzle, more rain. Such was the waste world through
which the Clan Macgregor wallowed. Other ships passed her, hooting as
they went. Small craft began to loom up under her massive bows, and
slide away from beneath her towering stern, always eluding Fate, as it
seemed, by miraculous inches. And slower and ever slower moved the
sea-mammoth, lugubriously trumpeting her distress and dismay at the
plight in which she found herself.
Thus and no otherwise would the Tyro have vented his grief and chagrin,
had he possessed competent vocal organs, more lost and befogged than the
ship which bore him and his sorrow to an alien land. For breakfast had
come and gone, and then luncheon and dinner, and nowhere had he caught
so much as a glimpse of Little Miss Grouch. At ten o'clock that night he
was standing immersed in gloom, within and without, staring out over the
rail into a world of blackness. Far out in the void, a bell tolled. The
Tyro resumed his purposeless promenade, meditating cheerlessly upon
buried hopes.
Now, were individuals required, as are craft, to carry fog signals, this
maritime record might be something other than it is. The collision was
head on, and the impact severe. The lighter craft recoiled against the
rail.
"Oh!" she said.
"You!" cried the Tyro, with the voice of glad tidings.
"How you frightened me!" she said, but the tone indicated more of
relief, not to say content, than alarm.
"I'm sorry. Where have you been all day?"
"Packing."
"Oh!" There was a pause. Then: "Lord Guenn doesn't know."
"Doesn't know what?"
"Doesn't know why. I asked him, you know. When you--er--disappeared. So
I have to ask you again. Why?"
"Aren't you afraid that when you die you'll change into a
question-mark?"
"Not at all. I intend to be answered before I die. Long before.
One--two--three; why?"
But she was ready for the question now. "About Mr. Van Dam, you mean?"
said she with elaborate carelessness. "Oh, well, you see, I'd be Mrs.
Denyse's cousin in that case and, after a week of her, I've concluded
that it isn't worth the price."
"Hard-hearted Parent will be displeased."
"I'm afraid so. Perhaps he'll cut me off with a shilling."
"I hope so."
"Now, that isn't a bit kind of you," she complained. "I'm not fitted for
poverty. Not that it would be literally a shilling. But to have to do
everything on twelve thousand a year--"
"How much?"
"That's all I can call my really own."
"And you consider that insufficient?" asked the Tyro, in a queer,
strained voice.
"Not as long as papa pays my principal bills," she explained. "But of
course, to live on--" An expressive shrug furnished the conclusion.
"For some years I lived on less than a tenth of it," said he.
"No! It couldn't be done."
"Don't you know anything at all about life?" he demanded, almost
angrily.
"Of course I do. But I don't bother about money and such things."
"I do. I've had to all my life. Even now, when I consider myself very
well off, I can make only a little more than the income which you
consider mere pin-money."
"Yet you can buy houses on the Battery," she insinuated.
"Only through the option that gives me the inside track. And even that
will make a huge hole in my pile."
"Ah, well," she said petulantly. "I don't see what difference it makes.
Anyway, I'm bored. Aren't you going to be any more amusing than this at
Guenn Oaks?"
"I'm not coming to Guenn Oaks."
"Who are you to say what you are or are not going to do--Slave?" she
said with her most imperious air.
At the tone, he rallied a difficult smile. "I'm the Honest Workingman.
Whereas you are--" he spread his hands out in a suave gesture, which was
exceedingly displeasing to Little Miss Grouch--"a mirage."
"A mirage?" she repeated.
"The Eternally Unattainable."
"Long words always make my head ache."
"I'll state it mathematically. If you concentrate your powerful
intellect upon the problem you will perceive that two plus two equals
four."
"In that faith I live and die! But what it has to do with Bertie Guenn's
invitation--"
"The sum proves up equally when raised to thousands, or millions."
"What concern has a Perfect Pig with figures?" she asked wistfully, and
lifted a hesitant hand in the darkness.
It fell lightly on his arm. In the soft gloom her face glimmered, dimly
warm to his vision, upturned to his. The fog covered much that might
otherwise have been seen, but failed to smother what might have been
(and in fact was, as Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson, turning the angle
of the deck, halted and tactfully melted away) heard. To wit:--
"Oh!" in a feminine and tremulous pitch.
"Forgive me," said the Tyro hoarsely. "That was for good-bye."
Was it a detaining hand that went forth in the darkness? If so, it
failed of its purpose, for the Tyro had gone.
Then and there Little Miss Grouch proceeded to pervert a proverb.
"Man proposes," she observed to herself, philosophically. "Maybe not
always, though. But, anyway, woman disposes. _I_ don't think that was
_really_ good-bye."
Behold now a complete reversal of conditions from the initial night of
the voyage. For now it was the Tyro who went to bed, miserable and at
odds with a hostile world; whereas Little Miss Grouch dreamed of a
morrow, new, glorious, and irradiated with a more splendid
adventurousness than her slave had ever previsioned.