Whatever the number was of the second-class stateroom on the _Citric_,
it was rather too far down in the belly of that leviathan to have suited
fashionable people. But Oliver and Nancy had stopped being fashionable
some time before and they told each other that it was _much_ nicer than
first-class on one of the small liners with apparent conviction and
never got tired of rejoicing at their luck in its being an outside.
It was true that the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly
ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed
with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you
could see things--once there had actually been a porpoise--and that
neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very
much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was a fact beyond
dispute.
“Time to get up, dear!” This is Oliver a little sternly from the upper
berth. “That was your bath that came in a minute ago and said something
in Cockney. At least I _think_ it was--mine's voice is a good deal more
like one of Peter's butlers--” “But, Ollie, I'm so _comfortable_!”
“So am I. But think of breakfast.”
“Well--breakfast is a point.” Then she chuckles, “Oh, Ollie, wouldn't it
have been _awful_ if we'd either of us been bad sailors!”
“We couldn't have been,” says Oliver placidly. “We have too much luck.”
“I know but--that awful woman with the face like a green pea--oh, Ollie,
you'd have hated me--we are lucky, darling.”
Oliver has thought seriously enough about getting up to be dangling his
legs over the edge of his shelf by now.
“Aren't we?” he says soberly. “I mean I am.”
“_I_ am. And everybody's being so nice about giving us checks we can use
instead of a lot of silly things we wouldn't know what to do with.” She
smiles. “Those are your feet,” she announces gravely.
“Yes. Well?”
“Oh, nothing. Only I'm going to tickle them.”
“You're not? Ouch--Nancy, you _little devil_!” and Oliver slides hastily
to the floor. Then he goes over to the port-hole.
“A very nice day!” he announces in the face of a bull's eye view of dull
skies and oily dripping sea.
“Is it? How kind of it! Ollie, I must get up.” “Nancy, you must.” He
goes over and kneels awkwardly by the side of her berth--an absurd
figure enough no doubt in tortoise-shell spectacles and striped pajamas,
but Nancy doesn't think so. As for him he simply knows he never will get
used to having her with him this way all the time; he takes his breath
delicately whenever he thinks of it, as if, if he weren't very careful
always about being quiet she might disappear any instant like a fairy
back into a book.
He kisses her.
“Good morning, Nancy.”
Her arms go round him.
“Good morning, dearest.”
“It isn't that I don't want to get up, really,” she explains presently.
“It's only that I like lying here and thinking about all the things that
are going to happen.”
“We are lucky, you know. Lordy bless the American Express.”
“And my job.” She smiles and he winces.
“Oh, Ollie, _dear_.”
“I was so damn silly,” says Oliver muffledly.
“Both of us. But now it doesn't matter. And we're both of us going to
work and be very efficient at it--only now we'll have time and together
and Paris to do all the things we really wanted to do. You _are_ going
to be a great novelist, Oliver, you know--”
“Well, you're going to be the foremost etcher--or etcheress--since
Whistler--there. But, oh, Nancy, I don't care if I write great
novels--or any novels--or anything else--just now.”
She mocks him pleasantly. “Why, Ollie, Ollie, Your Art?”
“Oh, _damn_ my art--I mean--well, I don't quite mean that. But this is
life.”
“Just as large and twice as natural,” says Nancy quoting, but for once
Oliver is too interested with living to be literary.
“Life,” he says, with an odd shakiness, an odd triumph, “Life,” and his
arms go round her shoulders.