QUOD SCRIPTUM EST
The _Fort Salisbury_ was cutting her way through the translucent green
water. Cape Town, with Table Mountain and the Lion's Head beyond it, was
vanishing into the increasing distance.
Antony had taken his passage on the _Fort Salisbury_ for three reasons:
number one, she was the first boat sailing from Cape Town after he had
dispatched his momentous cablegram; number two, he had a certain
diffidence regarding the expenditure of other people's money, and his
passage on the _Fort Salisbury_ would certainly be lower than on a mail
boat; number three, a curious and altogether unaccountable impulse had
impelled him to the choice. This reason had, perhaps unconsciously,
weighed with him considerably more than the other two. He often found
instinct throwing itself into the balance for or against the motives of
mere reason. When it was against mere reason, matters occasionally
complicated themselves in his mind. It had been a comfort to find, in
this case, reason on the same side of the scale as instinct.
Antony, leaning on the rail of the upper deck, was content, blissfully
content. The sole speck that marred his entire enjoyment was the fact
that the rules of the boat had separated him, _pro tem_, from an
exceedingly perplexed and distressed puppy. It was the perplexity and
distress of the said puppy that caused the speck, rather than the
separation. Antony, with the vaster wisdom vouchsafed to humans, knew the
present separation to be of comparatively short duration, and to be
endured in the avoidance of a possibly infinitely longer one. Not so
Josephus. He suffered in silence, since his deity had commanded the
silence, but the perplexed grief in his puppy heart found an echo in
Antony's.
It was a faint echo, however. Time and a daily visit would bring
consolation to Josephus; and, for himself, the present adventure--it was
an adventure--was all-absorbing and delicious. He revelled in it like a
schoolboy on a holiday. He watched the sparkling water, the tiny rippling
waves; he felt the freshness of the sea breeze, and the throb of the
engine like a great living heart in the body of the boat. The fact that
there were other people on her decks concerned him not at all. Those who
have travelled a good deal become, generally speaking, one of two
types,--the type that is quite enormously interested in everyone, and the
type that is entirely indifferent to any one. Antony was of this last
type. He had acquired a faculty for shutting his mental, and to a great
degree, his physical eyes to his human fellows, except in so far as sheer
necessity compelled. Naturally this did not make for popularity; but,
then, Antony did not care much for popularity. The winning of it would
have been too great an effort for his nature; the retaining of it, even
more strenuous. Of course the whole thing is entirely a question of
temperament.
A few of the other passengers looked somewhat curiously at the tall lean
man gazing out to sea; but, as he was so obviously oblivious of their
very existence, so entirely absorbed in his contemplation of the ocean,
they left him undisturbed.
It was not till the dressing bugle sounded that he roused himself, and
descended to his cabin. It was a matter for his fervent thanksgiving that
he had found himself the sole occupant of the tiny two-berthed
apartment.
He arrayed himself with scrupulous care. Only the most stringent
exigencies of time and place--though they for a while had been
frequent--had ever caused him to forego the ceremonial of donning dress
clothes for dinner, though no eyes but his own should behold him.
Latterly there had been Riffle and then Josephus to behold, and the
former to marvel. Josephus took it, puppy-like, as a matter of course.
There were not a vast number of passengers on the boat. Of the four
tables in the dining saloon, Antony found only two fully laid, and a
third partially so. His own place was some three seats from the captain's
left. The chair on the captain's right was, as yet, unoccupied. For the
rest, with but one or two exceptions at the other tables, the passengers
had already put in an appearance. The almost entire absence of wind, the
smoothness of the ocean, had given courage even to those the most
susceptible to the sea's malady. It would have required a really vivid
imagination to have perceived any motion in the boat other than the
throbbing of her engines.
Antony slipped into his seat, and a steward placed a plate of clear soup
before him. In the act of taking his first spoonful, he paused, his eyes
arrested by the sight of a woman advancing towards the chair on the
captain's right.
At the first glance, Antony saw that she was a tall woman, dressed in
black unrelieved save for ruffles of soft creamy lace at her throat and
wrists. Presently he took in further details, the dark chestnut of her
hair, the warm ivory of her skin, the curious steady gravity of her
eyes--grey or violet, he was not sure which,--the straight line of her
eyebrows, the delicate chiselling of her nose, and the red-rose of her
mouth. And yet, in spite of seeing the details, they were submerged in
the personality which had first arrested him. Something within him told
him as clearly as spoken words, that here, in her presence, lay the
explanation of the instinct which had prompted him to take his passage on
this boat.
An odd little thrill of unaccountable excitement ran through him. He felt
like a man who had been shown a page in his own life-book, and who found
the words written thereon extraordinarily and amazingly interesting. He
found himself longing, half-inarticulately, to turn the leaf; and, yet,
he knew that Time's hand alone could do this. He could only read as far
as the end of the open page before him. And that page but recorded the
fact of her presence.
Once, during the repast, her eyes met his, steady, grave, and yet with a
little note of half interrogation in them. Again Antony felt that odd
little thrill run through him, this time intensified, while his heart
beat and pounded under his immaculate white shirt-front.
Perhaps it is a mercy that shirt-fronts, to say nothing of other things,
do hide the vagaries of our hearts. It would be a sorry thing for us if
the world at large could perceive them,--the joy, the anguish, the
remorse, and the bitter little disappointments. Yes, above all, the
bitter little disappointments, the cause possibly so trivial, so childish
almost, yet the hurt, the wound, so very real, the pain so horribly
poignant. It is the little stab which smarts the most; the blow which
accompanies the deeper wound, numbs in its very delivery.
* * * * *
Later, in the moonlit darkness, Antony found himself again on deck, and
again leaning by the rail. Yet this time he had that page from his
life-book for company; and, marvelling, he perused the written words
thereon. It was extraordinary that they should hold such significance for
him. And why for him alone? he queried. Might not another, others even,
have read the selfsame words?
With the thought came a pang of something akin to jealousy at his heart.
He wanted the words for himself, written for him alone. And yet it was
entirely obvious, considering the number at the table, that they must
have been recorded for others also, since, as already mentioned, they but
recorded the fact of her presence. But did they hold the same
significance for the others? There was the question, and there possibly,
nay probably, lay the comfort. Also, what lay on the other side of the
page? Unanswerable at the moment.
He looked down at the gliding water, alive, alight with brilliant
phosphorus. A step behind him made his heart leap. He did not turn, but
he was conscious of a figure on his right, also looking down upon the
water. Suddenly there was a faint flutter of drapery, and the breeze sent
a trail of something soft and silky across his eyes.
"Oh, I am sorry," said a voice in the darkness.
Antony turned.
"The wind caught it," she explained apologetically, tucking the chiffon
streamer within her cloak.
Now, it is quite certain that Antony had here an opportunity to make one
of those little ordinary pleasant remarks that invariably lead to a
conversation, but none presented itself to his mind. He could do nothing
but utter the merest formal, though of course polite, acknowledgment of
her apology, his brain seeking wildly for further words the while. It
found none.
She gave him a little bow, courteous and not at all unfriendly, and moved
away across the deck. Antony looked after her figure receding in the
darkness.
"Oh, you idiot," he groaned within his heart, "you utter and double-dyed
idiot."
He looked despairingly down at the water, and from it to the moonlit sky.
Fate, so he mused ruefully, writes certain sentences in our life-book,
truly; but it behoves each one of us to fill in between the lines. And he
had filled in--nothing.
An hour or so later he descended dejectedly to his cabin.