Staniford sat in the moonlight, and tried to think what the steps were
that had brought him to this point; but there were no steps of which
he was sensible. He remembered thinking the night before that the
conditions were those of flirtation; to-night this had not occurred to
him. The talk had been of the dullest commonplaces; yet he had pressed
her hand and kept it in his, and had been about to kiss it. He bitterly
considered the disparity between his present attitude and the stand he
had taken when he declared to Dunham that it rested with them to guard
her peculiar isolation from anything that she could remember with pain
or humiliation when she grew wiser in the world. He recalled his rage
with Hicks, and the insulting condemnation of his bearing towards him
ever since; and could Hicks have done worse? He had done better: he had
kept away from her; he had let her alone.
That night Staniford slept badly, and woke with a restless longing to
see the girl, and to read in her face whatever her thought of him had
been. But Lydia did not come out to breakfast. Thomas reported that she
had a headache, and that he had already carried her the tea and toast
she wanted. “Well, it seems kind of lonesome without her,” said the
captain. “It don't seem as if we could get along.”
It seemed desolate to Staniford, who let the talk flag and fail round
him without an effort to rescue it. All the morning he lurked about,
keeping out of Dunham's way, and fighting hard through a dozen pages of
a book, to which he struggled to nail his wandering mind. A headache was
a little matter, but it might be even less than a headache. He belated
himself purposely at dinner, and entered the cabin just as Lydia issued
from her stateroom door.
She was pale and looked heavy-eyed. As she lifted her glance to him,
she blushed; and he felt the answering red stain his face. When she sat
down, the captain patted her on the shoulder with his burly right hand,
and said he could not navigate the ship if she got sick. He pressed her
to eat of this and that; and when she would not, he said, well, there
was no use trying to force an appetite, and that she would be better all
the sooner for dieting. Hicks went to his state-room, and came out
with a box of guava jelly, from his private stores, and won a triumph
enviable in all eyes when Lydia consented to like it with the chicken.
Dunham plundered his own and Staniford's common stock of dainties for
her dessert; the first officer agreed and applauded right and left;
Staniford alone sat taciturn and inoperative, watching her face
furtively. Once her eyes wandered to the side of the table where he and
Dunham sat; then she colored and dropped her glance.
He took his book again after dinner, and with his finger between the
leaves, at the last-read, unintelligible page, he went out to the bow,
and crouched down there to renew the conflict of the morning. It was not
long before Dunham followed. He stooped over to lay a hand on either of
Staniford's shoulders.
“What makes you avoid me, old man?” he demanded, looking into
Staniford's face with his frank, kind eyes.
“And I avoid you?” asked Staniford.
“Yes; why?”
“Because I feel rather shabby, I suppose. I knew I felt shabby, but I
didn't know I was avoiding you.”
“Well, no matter. If you feel shabby, it's all right; but I hate to have
you feel shabby.” He got his left hand down into Staniford's right, and
a tacit reconciliation was transacted between them. Dunham looked about
for a seat, and found a stool, which he planted in front of Staniford.
“Wasn't it pleasant to have our little lady back at table, again?”
“Very,” said Staniford.
“I couldn't help thinking how droll it was that a person whom we all
considered a sort of incumbrance and superfluity at first should really
turn out an object of prime importance to us all. Isn't it amusing?”
“Very droll.”
“Why, we were quite lost without her, at breakfast. I couldn't have
imagined her taking such a hold upon us all, in so short a time. But
she's a pretty creature, and as good as she's pretty.”
“I remember agreeing with you on those points before.” Staniford feigned
to suppress fatigue.
Dunham observed him. “I know you don't take so much interest in her
as--as the rest of us do, and I wish you did. You don't know what a
lovely nature she is.”
“No?”
“No; and I'm sure you'd like her.”
“Is it important that I should like her? Don't let your enthusiasm for
the sex carry you beyond bounds, Dunham.”
“No, no. Not important, but very pleasant. And I think acquaintance with
such a girl would give you some new ideas of women.”
“Oh, my old ones are good enough. Look here, Dunham,” said Staniford,
sharply, “what are you after?”
“What makes you think I'm after anything?”
“Because you're not a humbug, and because I am. My depraved spirit
instantly recognized the dawning duplicity of yours. But you'd better be
honest. You can't make the other thing work. What do you want?”
“I want your advice. I want your help, Staniford.”
“I thought so! Coming and forgiving me in that--apostolic manner.”
“Don't!”
“Well. What do you want my help for? What have you been doing?”
Staniford paused, and suddenly added: “Have you been making love to
Lurella?” He said this in his ironical manner, but his smile was rather
ghastly.
“For shame, Staniford!” cried Dunham. But he reddened violently.
“Then it isn't with Miss Hibbard that you want my help. I'm glad of
that. It would have been awkward. I'm a little afraid of Miss Hibbard.
It isn't every one has your courage, my dear fellow.”
“I haven't been making love to her,” said Dunham, “but--I--”
“But you what?” demanded Staniford sharply again. There had been less
tension of voice in his joking about Miss Hibbard.
“Staniford,” said his friend, “I don't know whether you noticed her, at
dinner, when she looked across to our own side?”
“What did she do?”
“Did you notice that she--well, that she blushed a little?”
Staniford waited a while before he answered, after a gulp, “Yes, I
noticed that.”
“Well, I don't know how to put it exactly, but I'm afraid that I have
unwittingly wronged this young girl.”
“Wronged her? What the devil _do_ you mean, Dunham?” cried Staniford,
with bitter impatience.
“I'm afraid--I'm afraid--Why, it's simply this: that in trying to amuse
her, and make the time pass agreeably, and relieve her mind, and
all that, don't you know, I've given her the impression that
I'm--well--interested in her, and that she may have allowed
herself--insensibly, you know--to look upon me in that light, and that
she may have begun to think--that she may have become--”
“Interested in you?” interrupted Staniford rudely.
“Well--ah--well, that is--ah--well--yes!” cried Dunham, bracing himself
to sustain a shout of ridicule. But Staniford did not laugh, and Dunham
had courage to go on. “Of course, it sounds rather conceited to say so,
but the circumstances are so peculiar that I think we ought to recognize
even any possibilities of that sort.”
“Oh, yes,” said Staniford, gravely. “Most women, I believe, are so
innocent as to think a man in love when he behaves like a lover. And
this one,” he added ruefully, “seems more than commonly ignorant of our
ways,--of our infernal shilly-shallying, purposeless no-mindedness.
She couldn't imagine a man--a gentleman--devoting himself to her by the
hour, and trying by every art to show his interest and pleasure in her
society, without imagining that he wished her to like him,--love him;
there's no half-way about it. She couldn't suppose him the shallow,
dawdling, soulless, senseless ape he really was.” Staniford was quite in
a heat by this time, and Dunham listened in open astonishment.
“You are hard upon me,” he said. “Of course, I have been to blame; I
know that, I acknowledge it. But my motive, as you know well enough, was
never to amuse myself with her, but to contribute in any way I could to
her enjoyment and happiness. I--”
“_You_!” cried Staniford. “What are you talking about?”
“What are _you_ talking about?” demanded Dunham, in his turn.
Staniford recollected himself. “I was speaking of abstract flirtation. I
was firing into the air.”
“In my case, I don't choose to call it flirtation,” returned Dunham. “My
purpose, I am bound to say, was thoroughly unselfish and kindly.”
“My dear fellow,” said Staniford, with a bitter smile, “there can be no
unselfishness and no kindliness between us and young girls, unless we
mean business,--love-making. You may be sure that they feel it so, if
they don't understand it so.”
“I don't agree with you. I don't believe it. My own experience is that
the sweetest and most generous friendships may exist between us, without
a thought of anything else. And as to making love, I must beg you to
remember that my love has been made once for all. I never dreamt of
showing Miss Blood anything but polite attention.”
“Then what are you troubled about?”
“I am troubled--” Dunham stopped helplessly, and Staniford laughed in a
challenging, disagreeable way, so that the former perforce resumed:
“I'm troubled about--about her possible misinterpretation.”
“Oh! Then in this case of sweet and generous friendship the party of the
second part may have construed the sentiment quite differently! Well,
what do you want me to do? Do you want me to take the contract off your
hands?”
“You put it grossly,” said Dunham.
“And _you_ put it offensively!” cried the other. “My regard for the
young lady is as reverent as yours. You have no right to miscolor my
words.”
“Staniford, you are too bad,” said Dunham, hurt even more than angered.
“If I've come to you in the wrong moment--if you are vexed at anything,
I'll go away, and beg your pardon for boring you.”
Staniford was touched; he looked cordially into his friend's face. “I
_was_ vexed at something, but you never can come to me at the wrong
moment, old fellow. I beg _your_ pardon. _I_ see your difficulty plainly
enough, and I think you're quite right in proposing to hold up,--for
that's what you mean, I take it?”
“Yes,” said Dunham, “it is. And I don't know how she will like it. She
will be puzzled and grieved by it. I hadn't thought seriously about the
matter till this morning, when she didn't come to breakfast. You know
I've been in the habit of asking her to walk with me every night after
tea; but Saturday evening you were with her, and last night I felt sore
about the affairs of the day, and rather dull, and I didn't ask her. I
think she noticed it. I think she was hurt.”
“You think so?” said Staniford, peculiarly.
“I might not have thought so,” continued Dunham, “merely because she did
not come to breakfast; but her blushing when she looked across at dinner
really made me uneasy.”
“Very possibly you're right.” Staniford mused a while before he spoke
again. “Well, what do you wish me to do?”
“I must hold up, as you say, and of course she will feel the difference.
I wish--I wish at least you wouldn't avoid her, Staniford. That's all.
Any little attention from you--I know it bores you--would not only
break the loneliness, but it would explain that--that my--attentions
didn't--ah--hadn't meant anything.”
“Oh!”
“Yes; that it's common to offer them. And she's a girl of so much force
of character that when she sees the affair in its true light--I suppose
I'm to blame! Yes, I ought to have told her at the beginning that I
was engaged. But you can't force a fact of that sort upon a new
acquaintance: it looks silly.” Dunham hung his head in self-reproach.
“Well?” asked Staniford.
“Well, that's all! No, it _isn't_ all, either. There's something else
troubles me. Our poor little friend is a blackguard, I suppose?”
“Hicks?”
“Yes.”
“You have invited him to be the leader of your orchestra, haven't you?”
“Oh, don't, Staniford!” cried Dunham in his helplessness. “I should hate
to see her dependent in any degree upon that little cad for society.”
Cad was the last English word which Dunham had got himself used to.
“That was why I hoped that you wouldn't altogether neglect her. She's
here, and she's no choice but to remain. We can't leave her to herself
without the danger of leaving her to Hicks. You see?”
“Well,” said Staniford gloomily, “I'm not sure that you couldn't leave
her to a worse cad than Hicks.” Dunham looked up in question. “To me,
for example.”
“Oh, hallo!” cried Dunham.
“I don't see how I'm to be of any use,” continued the other. “I'm not a
squire of dames; I should merely make a mess of it.”
“You're mistaken, Staniford,--I'm sure you are,--in supposing that she
dislikes you,” urged his friend.
“Oh, very likely.”
“I know that she's simply afraid of you.”
“Don't flatter, Dunham. Why should I care whether she fears me or
affects me? No, my dear fellow. This is irretrievably your own affair.
I should be glad to help you out if I knew how. But I don't. In the mean
time your duty is plain, whatever happens. You can't overdo the sweet
and the generous in this wicked world without paying the penalty.”
Staniford smiled at the distress in which Dunham went his way. He
understood very well that it was not vanity, but the liveliness of a
sensitive conscience, that had made Dunham search his conduct for the
offense against the young girl's peace of heart which he believed he had
committed, and it was the more amusing because he was so guiltless of
harm. Staniford knew who was to blame for the headache and the blush. He
knew that Dunham had never gone so far; that his chivalrous pleasure in
her society might continue for years free from flirtation. But in
spite of this conviction a little poignant doubt made itself felt, and
suddenly became his whole consciousness. “Confound him!” he mused. “I
wonder if she really could care anything for him!” He shut his book, and
rose to his feet with such a burning in his heart that he could not have
believed himself capable of the greater rage he felt at what he just
then saw. It was Lydia and Hicks seated together in the place where he
had sat with her. She leaned with one arm upon the rail, in an attitude
that brought all her slim young grace into evidence. She seemed on
very good terms with him, and he was talking and making her laugh as
Staniford had never heard her laugh before--so freely, so heartily.