“WORK!“ said Mr. Robert Vyner, severely, as he reclined in a deck-chair
on the poop of the _Indian Chief_ and surveyed his surroundings through
half-closed eyes. “Work! It’s no good sitting here idling while the
world’s work awaits my attention.”
Captain Trimblett, who was in a similar posture a yard away, assented.
He also added that there was “nothing like it.”
“There’s no play without work,” continued Mr. Vyner, in a spirit of
self-admonition.
The captain assented again. “You said something about work half an hour
ago,” he remarked.
“And I meant it,” said Mr. Vyner; “only in unconscious imitation I dozed
off. What I really want is for somebody to take my legs, somebody else
my shoulders, and waft me gently ashore.”
“I had a cook o’ mine put ashore like that once,” said Captain
Trimblett, in a reminiscent voice; “only I don’t know that I would have
called it ’wafting,’ and, so far as my memory goes, he didn’t either. He
had a lot to say about it, too.”
Mr. Vyner, with a noisy yawn, struggled out of his chair and stood
adjusting his collar and waistcoat.
“If I couldn’t be a chrysalis,” he said, slowly, as he looked down at
the recumbent figure of the captain, “do you know what I would like to
be?”
“I’ve had a very hard day’s work,” said the other, defensively, as he
struggled into a sitting posture—“very hard. And I was awake half the
night with the toothache.”
“That isn’t an answer to my question,” said Mr. Vyner, gently. “But
never mind; try and get a little sleep now; try and check that feverish
desire for work, which is slowly, very, very slowly, wearing you to skin
and bone. Think how grieved the firm would be if the toothache carried
you off one night. Why not go below and turn in now? It’s nearly five
o’clock.”
“Couldn’t sleep if I did,” replied the captain, gravely. “Besides, I’ve
got somebody coming aboard to have tea with me this afternoon.”
“All right, I’m going,” said Robert, reassuringly. “Nobody I know, I
suppose?”
“No,” said the captain. “Not exactly,” he added, with a desire of being
strictly accurate.
Mr. Vyner became thoughtful. The captain’s reticence, coupled with the
fact that he had made two or three attempts to get rid of him that
afternoon, was suspicious. He wondered whether Joan Hartley was the
expected guest; the captain’s unwillingness to talk whenever her name
came up having by no means escaped him. And once or twice the captain
had, with unmistakable meaning, dropped hints as to the progress made by
Mr. Saunders in horticulture and other pursuits. At the idea of this
elderly mariner indulging in matrimonial schemes with which he had no
sympathy, he became possessed with a spirit of vindictive emulation.
“It seems like a riddle; you’ve excited my curiosity,” he said, as he
threw himself back in the chair again and looked at the gulls wheeling
lazily overhead. “Let me see whether I can guess—I’ll go as soon as I
have.”
“’Tisn’t worth guessing,” said Captain Trimblett, with a touch of
brusqueness.
“Don’t make it too easy,” pleaded Mr. Vyner. “Guess number one: a lady?”
The captain grunted.
“A widow,” continued Mr. Vyner, in the slow, rapt tones of a
clairvoyant. “The widow!”
“What do you mean by _the_ widow?” demanded the aroused captain.
“The one you are always talking about,” replied Mr. Vyner, winking at
the sky.
“Me!” said the captain, purpling. “I don’t talk about her. You don’t
hear me talk about her. I’m not always talking about anybody. I might
just have mentioned her name when talking about Truefitt’s troubles;
that’s all.”
“That’s what I meant,” said Robert Vyner, with an air of mild surprise.
“Well, it’s not her,” said the captain, shortly.
“Somebody I know, but not exactly,” mused Robert. “Somebody I know,
but—Let me think.”
He closed his eyes in an effort of memory, and kept them shut so long
that the captain, anxious to get him away before his visitor’s arrival,
indulged in a loud and painful fit of coughing. Mr. Vyner’s eyes
remained closed.
“Any more guesses?” inquired the captain, loudly.
Mr. Vyner slept on. Gulls mewed overhead; a rattle of cranes sounded
from the quays, and a conversation—mostly in hoarse roars—took place
between the boatswain in the bows and an elderly man ashore, but he
remained undisturbed. Then he sprang up so suddenly that he nearly
knocked his chair over, and the captain, turning his head after him in
amaze, saw Joan Hartley standing at the edge of the quay.
Before he could interfere Mr. Vyner, holding her hand with anxious
solicitude, was helping her aboard. Poised for a moment on the side of
the ship, she sprang lightly to the deck, and the young man,
relinquishing her hand with some reluctance, followed her slowly toward
the captain.
Ten minutes later, by far the calmest of the three, he sat at tea in the
small but comfortable saloon. How he got there Captain Trimblett could
not exactly remember. Mr. Vyner had murmured something about a slight
headache, due in his opinion to the want of a cup of tea, and, even
while talking about going home to get it, had in an abstracted fashion
drifted down the companion-way.
“I feel better already,” he remarked, as he passed his cup up to Miss
Hartley to be refilled. “It’s wonderful what a cup of tea will do.”
“It has its uses,” said the captain, darkly.
He took another cup himself and sat silent and watchful, listening to
the conversation of his guests. A slight appearance of reserve on Miss
Hartley’s part, assumed to remind Mr. Vyner of his bad behaviour on the
occasion of their last meeting, was dispelled almost immediately.
Modesty, tinged with respectful admiration, was in every glance and
every note of his voice. When she discovered that a man who had asked
for his tea without sugar had drunk without remark a cup containing
three lumps, she became thoughtful.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, in concern.
Modesty and Mr. Vyner—never boon companions—parted company.
“I thought you had given me the wrong cup,” he said, simply.
The explanation seemed to Captain Trimblett quite inadequate. He sat
turning it over in his mind, and even the rising colour in Miss
Hartley’s cheek did not serve to enlighten him. But he was glad to
notice that she was becoming reserved again. Mr. Vyner noticed it, too,
and, raging inwardly against a tongue which was always striving after
his undoing, began with a chastened air to criticise the architecture of
the new chapel in Porter Street. Architecture being a subject of which
the captain knew nothing, he discussed it at great length, somewhat
pleased to find that both his listeners were giving him their undivided
attention.
He was glad to notice, when they went up on deck again, that his guests
had but little to say to each other, and, with a view to keeping them
apart as much as possible, made no attempt to detain her when Joan rose
and said that she must be going. She shook hands and then turned to Mr.
Vyner.
“Oh, I must be going, too,” said that gentleman.
He helped her ashore and, with a wave of his hand to Captain Trimblett,
set off by her side. At the bridge, where their ways homeward diverged,
Joan half stopped, but Mr. Vyner, gazing straight ahead, kept on.
“Fine chap, Captain Trimblett,” he said, suddenly.
“He is the kindest man I know,” said Joan, warmly.
Mr. Vyner sang his praises for three hundred yards, secretly conscious
that his companion was thinking of ways and means of getting rid of him.
The window of a confectioner’s shop at last furnished the necessary
excuse.
“I have got a little shopping to do,” she said, diving in suddenly.
“Good-by.”
The “good-by” was so faint that it was apparent to her as she stood in
the shop and gave a modest order for chocolates that he had not heard
it. She bit her lip, and after a glance at the figure outside, added to
her order a large one for buns. She came out of the shop with a bag
overflowing with them.
“Let me,” said Mr. Vyner, hastily.
Miss Hartley handed them over at once, and, walking by his side, strove
hard to repress malicious smiles. She walked slowly and gave appraising
glances at shop windows, pausing finally at a greengrocer’s to purchase
some bananas. Mr. Vyner, with the buns held in the hollow of his arm,
watched her anxiously, and his face fell as she agreed with the
greengrocer as to the pity of spoiling a noble bunch he was displaying.
Insufficiently draped in a brown-paper bag, it took Mr. Vyner’s other
arm.
“You are quite useful,” said Miss Hartley, with a bright smile.
Mr. Vyner returned the smile, and in bowing to an acquaintance nearly
lost a bun. He saved it by sheer sleight of hand, and noting that his
companion was still intent on the shops, wondered darkly what further
burdens were in store for him. He tried to quicken the pace, but Miss
Hartley was not to be hurried.
“I must go in here, I think,” she said, stopping in front of a draper’s.
“I sha’n’t be long.”
Mr. Vyner took his stand by the window with his back to the passers-by,
and waited. At the expiration of ten minutes he peeped in at the door,
and saw Miss Hartley at the extreme end of the shop thoughtfully
fingering bales of cloth. He sighed, and, catching sight of a small boy
regarding him, had a sudden inspiration.
“Here! Would you like some buns, old chap?” he cried.
The child’s eyes glistened.
“Take ’em,” said Mr. Vyner, thankfully. “Don’t drop ’em.”
He handed them over and stood smiling benevolently as the small boy,
with both arms clasped round the bag, went off hugging it to his bosom.
Another urchin, who had been regarding the transaction with speechless
envy, caught his eye. He beckoned him to him and, with a few kind words
and a fatherly admonition not to make himself ill, presented him with
the bananas. Then he drew a deep breath, and, assuming an expression
of gravity befitting the occasion, braced himself for the inevitable
encounter.
Five minutes later Miss Hartley, bearing a large and badly-tied parcel,
came smiling out to him. The smile faded suddenly, and she stood
regarding him in consternation.
“Why—!” she began. “Where—?”
Mr. Vyner eyed her carefully. “I gave ’em away,” he said, slowly. “Two
poor, hungry little chaps stood looking at me. I am awfully fond of
children, and before I knew what I was doing—”
“I’ve no doubt,” said Joan, bitterly, as she realized her defeat. “I’ve
no doubt.”
Mr. Vyner leaned toward the parcel. “Allow me,” he murmured, politely.
“Thank you, I’ll carry it myself,” said Joan, sharply.
Her taste for shopping had evaporated, and clutching her parcel she
walked rapidly homeward. An occasional glance at her companion did not
quite satisfy her that he was keeping his sense of humour under proper
control. There was a twitching of his lips which might, she felt, in a
little time become contagious. She averted her head.
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Vyner, with a sigh of relief. “I was half
afraid that I had offended you.”