She threw herself upon the couch by the window and broke into sobs.
"Say, Fancy! It's after seven o'clock," Cayley called to her from the
kitchen.
She stumbled to her feet and went out on deck, dipped her handkerchief
in the salt water and bathed her eyes. Cayley came out just as she
finished. It was too dark, now, to notice her expression.
They took the rowboat which had been nuzzling alongside the flank of the
ark all day, made for the shore and went aboard the steamer.
It was crowded with Sunday picnickers, who came trooping on in groups,
singing, the girls flushed and sunburned with hair distraught and dusty
shoes; the men in jovial, uncouth disarray in canvas and in corduroy,
like tramps and vagabonds, laden with ferns and flowers. Hunters, with
guns and dogs, tramped aboard; fishermen, with rods and baskets; tired
families, lagging, whining, came in weary procession. Both decks of the
boat were crowded. A brass band struck up a popular air. The
restaurant, the bar and the bootblack stand all did a great business.
Cayley and Fancy Gray went to the upper deck for a last draft of the
summer breeze. As they sat there, talking little, watching the throng
of uneasy passengers, Fancy called his attention to a couple sitting
opposite.
It was a strangely assorted pair, the girl and the man. She was about
twenty years of age, with a pretty, earnest, freckled face and a modest
air. She was talking happily, with undisguised fondness, to the young
man beside her. His face was hideous, without a nose. In its place was
a livid scar and a depression perforated by nostrils that made his
appearance malign. He wore nothing to conceal the mutilation, shocking
as it was. His manner toward the girl was that of a lover, devoted and
tender.
"Did you ever see anything so awful?" said Fancy. "And isn't she
terribly in love with him though! I know who she is; her name is
Fleurette Heller. She came into Granthope's studio once and I took a
great liking to her. Frank told her that her love affair would come out
all right, and she'd be happier than she ever was in her life before."
"I don't see how she can endure that object," said Cayley.
"Don't you?" said Fancy, "that's because you don't know women. She's in
love with him. I understand it perfectly. I wouldn't care a bit how he
looked."
She nodded, as she spoke, to a man who passed just then. He was
dark-skinned, with a pointed beard. He gave her a quick jerk of the head
and grinned, showing a line of yellow teeth, and his glance jumped with
the rapidity of machinery from her face to Cayley's, and away again. He
walked on, his hands behind his back against a coat so faded and shiny
as to glow purple as a plum.
Fancy's eyes followed him. "That's Vixley," she said.
Cayley's look turned from a pretty blonde across the way and he became
immediately attentive. "Who's Vixley?"
"Why, Professor Vixley, the slate-writer, you know."
"Oh, yes--he's a medium, is he? What sort is he?"
She shook her head. "Wolf! He makes me sick. I'm afraid of him, too.
He's out after Granthope with a knife, and I'm afraid he'll do for him
some day. Frank ought never to have stood in with him, but you know he
used to live with a friend of this man's when he was little, and they've
got a hold on him he can't break very well."
"They know things about him?"
"Yes, in a way. Before he braced up. He's square now, and he's trying
to shake that bunch. Poor old Frank!"