AN UNEXPECTED OUTBURST
The sea is an ancient worker of miracles in amazing transformation, but
rarely does it bring about a more complete or startling metamorphosis
than that which was wrought upon Grenville--trusted messenger for a
friend.
Long before the shores of Cathay loomed welcomely upon his vision he
had lost all sense of weariness or depression, and likewise all that
worn and gaunt appearance of a large, thin frame inhabited by a dogged
but thoroughly exhausted spirit.
He was once more his strong, bold, interested self, merry of speech,
bright-eyed, untamed in his buoyant nature, lovable, thoughtful of
those about him, impetuous, and never to be repressed. He had flirted
uninterruptedly with all the old women and the children on the outward
voyage, and was now as cheerfully repeating this gay performance on the
steamship "Inca," homeward bound, on which he was certainly the
favorite of the crew and his fellow-passengers.
The fortnight passed with Elaine upon the sea had been wholly
uneventful, save for the vast commotion astir in Grenville's being.
The worst that could happen, he told himself, had happened. His daily
deportment towards his charge had baffled, piqued, and amused that
young lady alternately, and convinced her that here was a brand-new
specimen of the genus man with which she had never had a genuine
experience.
She found him boyish, unexpected, apparently indifferent, and even
unaware, at times, of her existence on the vessel, then fairly
effervescent with deviltry that left her all but gasping. He was not
to be classified, fixed, or calculated, save in certain traits of
fearlessness, generosity, and kindness to those most needful of a
helping smile, a merry word, or a spell of relief from daily cares.
He commanded a certain admiration from the puzzled girl, but as yet her
actual feelings towards him were quite unanalyzed. She was constantly
finding herself astonished at the scope and variety of his information;
she was glad to listen when he talked; she was frequently touched to
the very heart by his tender care of one or two frail little beings on
the ship to whom much of his time was devoted.
There they were, with the situation between them apparently commonplace
to dullness--till this one particular day.
It was not a common day on the ocean. Despite the fact he was neither
mariner nor meteorologist, Grenville felt some vast disturbance
impending in all the lifeless air, regardless of the fact the barometer
was steady and the calm, rainless spell had been exceptionally
prolonged. It was not precisely a premonition that addressed itself to
his senses; it was something he could not explain.
A wave of heat passed swiftly through his body, leaving a strange
excitement in its train, as he paused for a second to wonder if the
"symptoms" he sensed were concerned not at all with sea or weather, but
wholly with Elaine.
He admitted the love--the wild, free, passionate love that had swept
him away, past all safe anchorage, with her entry into his existence.
He had made no effort to conceal it from himself, to deny its
overwhelming force. He had cursed Gerald Fenton most heartily and
consistently for casting him into this maelstrom of conflicting
emotions, and daily and nightly he had waged mighty war with that
fortunately absent individual, who had calmly accepted his challenge.
The trouble had come unbidden. Elaine was so wholly different from the
girl represented by Fenton's photograph! The picture had seemed so
lifeless--and she was so gloriously alive! That one fact alone seemed
sufficient excuse to Grenville for all that had happened to him since.
He had not been fully informed, he argued, respecting her wondrous
charms.
The two weeks mentioned, with Elaine at his side, had certainly
accomplished the world-old complication once more, despite all his hard
and honest struggling. When the fight had ceased he did not even know.
What Elaine's private attitude was towards himself he had taken no time
to inquire. That part mattered less than nothing at all--at least as
concerned the present. He had warned old Fenton what to expect, but
now--by the gods--how deeply he was mired in the quandary!
He was certainly mighty hard hit, he confessed, but meantime was
equally positive that the singular something he plainly felt, invading
the air and telling its message to some faint, imperfect sense of his
being, had nothing whatsoever to do with this business of passionate
emotions. Yet not a sign of uneasiness on the part of officers and
crew could his keenest wit discover, in any quarter of the iron craft
plowing steadily on across the sea.
He had climbed to the topmost deck of the ship, where he and a
carpenter, who was hewing out a boat thwart with a gleaming adze, were
temporarily alone. It was not Grenville's manner of wooing to hover
beside Elaine throughout the day or evening. He had done no wooing, as
a matter of fact, beyond assuming a somewhat bold but unoffending
guardianship, which she might have found refreshing had it not so
frequently taken her breath with its very matter-of-factness.
At the present moment, as Grenville was well aware, she was somewhere
down on the shaded portion of the promenade, where the erstwhile stir
of tropic air had ebbed to utter sluggishness and finally expired. One
of the purser's young assistants, dressed in wrinkled white duck, was
dumbly adoring at her side.
Impatiently banishing Fenton from his thoughts, Grenville gazed idly at
the sultry sky, and as idly at the carpenter, wielding the polished
adze. When a deckhand presently called this workman away, Grenville
took up the implement left behind, felt he would like to swing it just
once at the root of the complication now arisen between himself and his
distant friend--on whose money he was voyaging--and whose sweetheart
his nature demanded for a mate--and, replacing the tool on the
weathered planks, he thrust both hands in his pockets and paced to and
fro, beside a pair of inverted lifeboats and a raft, that occupied most
of the deck.
He finally flung himself down on a hatch, in the shade of a
white-painted funnel, and plunged his warring faculties into
concentrated study of a problem in mechanics involved in a new
invention. On the back of a letter, drawn from an inside pocket, he
drew black hieroglyphics, that to him were wheels and levers that
relieved his state of mind.
Absorption claimed him for its own. The swift, weird changes of the
sky and atmosphere escaped his engrossed attention. He was not even
aware of her presence till Elaine had been standing for fully five
minutes, a few feet only from his side.
When he looked up at last and beheld once more that singular glow and
beauty in the depths of her luminous eyes, and felt the subtle flattery
involved in the fact she had come to the place to find him, seek him
out, a flood of tidal passion surged to his outermost veins.
It was just the one straw too much, this unforeseen encounter, with the
smile upon her lips. His sturdy resolutions all went down in utter
confusion before the wild gladness of his heart. Yet he made no
outward sign for Elaine to read.
Calmly, to all appearances, he placed the letter in his pocket.
"I hope," said Elaine, "I haven't disrupted anything important."
He arose and gazed at her oddly.
"You have, Elaine," he answered, in a voice he strove hard to control.
"You've not only disrupted everything heretofore moving along its
accustomed path of order, law, and calm, but you've also upset all
sorts of established institutions and raised some merry Hades."
A spirit of the lively old Nick was infusing with his youthful blood as
he stood there gazing upon her. Elaine, however, either failed to
detect its presence, or she failed to understand.
"I?" she said, "Mr. Grenville. I'm sorry. What have I done?"
He could not have done the conventional thing, the deliberate, calm, or
expected thing, to save his immortal soul. His nature was far too
honest, too unabashed. He came a step nearer--and then she knew, but
she could not have moved at the moment had death been the oncoming
penalty for remaining where she stood. She had never been so startled
in her life.
They two were absolutely alone and unobserved. Of this the impulsive
Grenville was aware--and the knowledge had fired a certain madness in
his being he was powerless to quell.
"Elaine," he said, as he suddenly caught her unresisting hands, "you've
put old Fenton entirely out of the game. You're going to marry me."
She was dimly conscious of pain in her hands, where he crushed them in
his ardor. But her shocked surprise was uppermost, as she faced him
with blazing eyes.
"Mr. Grenville!" she said. "Mr. Grenville--you---- To say--to
speak----"
"Elaine," he interrupted gayly, bright devils dancing in his boyish
eyes, "it simply couldn't be helped. We were intended to meet--and
were cut out for one another. So the hour must come when you'll pitch
old Gerald's ring in the sea by order of the very Fates themselves!"
She snatched away her hands in indignation.
"For shame!" she cried in rising anger, her whole womanly being aflame
with resistance to all his growing madness. "You haven't the slightest
right in the world----"
"Right?" he repeated. "Right? I love you, Elaine! I love you!
Haven't I said----"
"Oh, the treachery--the treachery to Gerald!" she cut in, with swiftly
increasing emotion. "To say such things when your honor----"
"Wait!" he interrupted, eagerly. "I told him what he might expect from
any such arrangement. I warned him precisely what might happen. He
understood--accepted my conditions--made it a challenge--declared if I
tried I couldn't win! And now----"
"You can't--you can't!--you can't!" she cried at him, angrily. "To
think that Gerald--to think you'd dare----"
He suddenly caught her in his arms and crushed her against his breast.
He kissed her on the mouth, despite her struggles.
"Elaine," he said, "you are mine--all mine--my sweetheart--my
comrade--my mate!"
She finally planted her fists against his throat and thrust him from
her in fury.
"You brute!" she answered, sobbing in her anger. "I hate you--I loathe
you--despise you utterly! I wish I might never see your face again!"
"I'll make you love me, Elaine," he answered, white at last with
intensity and deep-going passion. "I'll make you love me, as I love
you--as madly--as wholly--as wondrously--before ever we two get home."
Already Elaine was retreating from the place.
"Never!" she answered, wildly. "Never, never, never!--do you
hear?--not if it takes this boat a hundred years!" And gropingly,
almost blinded by her sense of shame and rage, she fled from the deck
and down the stairs, leaving him shaken where he stood.