"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.



XIII.

The atoms that had been tending in Staniford's being toward a certain form suddenly arrested and shaped themselves anew at the vibration imparted by this laughter. He no longer felt himself Hicks's possible inferior, but vastly better in every way, and out of the turmoil of his feelings in regard to Lydia was evolved the distinct sense of having been trifled with. Somehow, an advantage had been taken of his sympathies and purposes, and his forbearance had been treated with contempt.

The conviction was neither increased nor diminished by the events of the evening, when Lydia brought out some music from her state-room, and Hicks appeared, flute in hand, from his, and they began practicing one of the pieces together. It was a pretty enough sight. Hicks had been gradually growing a better-looking fellow; he had an undeniable picturesqueness, as he bowed his head over the music towards hers; and she, as she held the sheet with one hand for him to see, while she noiselessly accompanied herself on the table with the fingers of the other, and tentatively sang now this passage and now that, was divine. The picture seemed pleasing to neither Staniford nor Dunham; they went on deck together, and sat down to their cigarettes in their wonted place. They did not talk of Lydia, or of any of the things that had formed the basis of their conversation hitherto, but Staniford returned to his Colorado scheme, and explained at length the nature of his purposes and expectations. He had discussed these matters before, but he had never gone into them so fully, nor with such cheerful earnestness. He said he should never marry,—he had made up his mind to that; but he hoped to make money enough to take care of his sister's boy Jim handsomely, as the little chap had been named for him. He had been thinking the matter over, and he believed that he should get back by rail and steamer as soon as he could after they reached Trieste. He was not sorry he had come; but he could not afford to throw away too much time on Italy, just then.

Dunham, on his part, talked a great deal of Miss Hibbard, and of some curious psychological characteristics of her dyspepsia. He asked Staniford whether he had ever shown him the photograph of Miss Hibbard taken by Sarony when she was on to New York the last time: it was a three-quarters view, and Dunham thought it the best she had had done. He spoke of her generous qualities, and of the interest she had always had in the Diet Kitchen, to which, as an invalid, her attention had been particularly directed: and he said that in her last letter she had mentioned a project for establishing diet kitchens in Europe, on the Boston plan. When their talk grew more impersonal and took a wider range, they gathered suggestion from the situation, and remarked upon the immense solitude of the sea. They agreed that there was something weird in the long continuance of fine weather, and that the moon had a strange look. They spoke of the uncertainty of life. Dunham regretted, as he had often regretted before, that his friend had no fixed religious belief; and Staniford gently accepted his solicitude, and said that he had at least a conviction if not a creed. He then begged Dunham's pardon in set terms for trying to wound his feelings the day before; and in the silent hand-clasp that followed they renewed all the cordiality of their friendship. From time to time, as they talked, the music from below came up fitfully, and once they had to pause as Lydia sang through the song that she and Hicks were practicing.

As the days passed their common interest in the art brought Hicks and the young girl almost constantly together, and the sound of their concerting often filled the ship. The musicales, less formal than Dunham had intended, and perhaps for that reason a source of rapidly diminishing interest with him, superseded both ring-toss and shuffle- board, and seemed even more acceptable to the ship's company as an entertainment. One evening, when the performers had been giving a piece of rather more than usual excellence and difficulty, one of the sailors, deputed by his mates, came aft, with many clumsy shows of deference, and asked them to give Marching through Georgia. Hicks found this out of his repertory, but Lydia sang it. Then the group at the forecastle shouted with one voice for Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching, and so beguiled her through the whole list of war-songs. She ended with one unknown to her listeners, but better than all the rest in its pathetic words and music, and when she had sung The Flag's come back to Tennessee, the spokesman of the sailors came aft again, to thank her for his mates, and to say they would not spoil that last song by asking for anything else. It was a charming little triumph for her, as she sat surrounded by her usual court: the captain was there to countenance the freedom the sailors had taken, and Dunham and Staniford stood near, but Hicks, at her right hand, held the place of honor.

The next night Staniford found her alone in the waist of the ship, and drew up a stool beside the rail where she sat.

"We all enjoyed your singing so much, last night, Miss Blood. I think Mr. Hicks plays charmingly, but I believe I prefer to hear your voice alone."

"Thank you," said Lydia, looking down, demurely.

"It must be a great satisfaction to feel that you can give so much pleasure."

"I don't know," she said, passing the palm of one hand over the back of the other.

"When you are a prima donna you mustn't forget your old friends of the Aroostook. We shall all take vast pride in you."

It was not a question, and Lydia answered nothing. Staniford, who had rather obliged himself to this advance, with some dim purpose of showing that nothing had occurred to alienate them since the evening, of their promenade, without having proved to himself that it was necessary to do this, felt that he was growing angry. It irritated him to have her sit as unmoved after his words as if he had not spoken.

"Miss Blood," he said, "I envy you your gift of snubbing people."

Lydia looked at him. "Snubbing people?" she echoed.

"Yes; your power of remaining silent when you wish to put down some one who has been wittingly or unwittingly impertinent."

"I don't know what you mean," she said, in a sort of breathless way.

"And you didn't intend to mark your displeasure at my planning your future?"

"No! We had talked of that. I—"

"And you were not vexed with me for anything? I have been afraid that I—that you—" Staniford found that he was himself getting short of breath. He had begun with the intention of mystifying her, but matters had suddenly taken another course, and he was really anxious to know whether any disagreeable associations with that night lingered in her mind. With this longing came a natural inability to find the right word. "I was afraid—" he repeated, and then he stopped again. Clearly, he could not tell her that he was afraid he had gone too far; but this was what he meant. "You don't walk with me, any more, Miss Blood," he concluded, with an air of burlesque reproach.

"You haven't asked me—since," she said.

He felt a singular value and significance in this word, since. It showed that her thoughts had been running parallel with his own; it permitted, if it did not signify, that he should resume the mood of that time, where their parting had interrupted it. He enjoyed the fact to the utmost, but he was not sure that he wished to do what he was permitted. "Then I didn't tire you?" he merely asked. He was not sure, now he came to think of it, that he liked her willingness to recur to that time. He liked it, but not quite in the way he would have liked to like it.

"No," she said.

"The fact is," he went on aimlessly, "that I thought I had rather abused your kindness. Besides," he added, veering off, "I was afraid I should be an interruption to the musical exercises."

"Oh, no," said Lydia. "Mr. Dunham hasn't arranged anything yet." Staniford thought this uncandid. It was fighting shy of Hicks, who was the person in his own mind; and it reawakened a suspicion which was lurking there. "Mr. Dunham seems to have lost his interest."

This struck Staniford as an expression of pique; it reawakened quite another suspicion. It was evident that she was hurt at the cessation of Dunham's attentions. He was greatly minded to say that Dunham was a fool, but he ended by saying, with sarcasm, "I suppose he saw that he was superseded."

"Mr. Hicks plays well," said Lydia, judicially, "but he doesn't really know so much of music as Mr. Dunham."

"No?" responded Staniford, with irony. "I will tell Dunham. No doubt he's been suffering the pangs of professional jealousy. That must be the reason why he keeps away."

"Keeps away?" asked Lydia.

"Now I've made an ass of myself!" thought Staniford. "You said that he seemed to have lost his interest," he answered her.

"Oh! Yes!" assented Lydia. And then she remained rather distraught, pulling at the ruffling of her dress.

"Dunham is a very accomplished man," said Staniford, finding the usual satisfaction in pressing his breast against the thorn. "He's a great favorite in society. He's up to no end of things." Staniford uttered these praises in a curiously bitter tone. "He's a capital talker. Don't you think he talks well?"

"I don't know; I suppose I haven't seen enough people to be a good judge."

"Well, you've seen enough people to know that he's very good looking?"

"Yes?"

"You don't mean to say you don't think him good looking?"

"No,—oh, no, I mean—that is—I don't know anything about his looks. But he resembles a lady who used to come from Boston, summers. I thought he must be her brother."

"Oh, then you think he looks effeminate!" cried Staniford, with inner joy. "I assure you," he added with solemnity, "Dunham is one of the manliest fellows in the world!"

"Yes?" said Lydia.

Staniford rose. He was smiling gayly as he looked over the broad stretch of empty deck, and down into Lydia's eyes. "Wouldn't you like to take a turn, now?"

"Yes," she said promptly, rising and arranging her wrap across her shoulders, so as to leave her hands free. She laid one hand in his arm and gathered her skirt with the other, and they swept round together for the start and confronted Hicks.

"Oh!" cried Lydia, with what seemed dismay, "I promised Mr. Hicks to practice a song with him." She did not try to release her hand from Staniford's arm, but was letting it linger there irresolutely.

Staniford dropped his arm, and let her hand fall. He bowed with icy stiffness, and said, with a courtesy so fierce that Mr. Hicks, on whom he glared as he spoke, quailed before it, "I yield to your prior engagement."



XIV.

It was nothing to Staniford that she should have promised Hicks to practice a song with him, and no process of reasoning could have made it otherwise. The imaginary opponent with whom he scornfully argued the matter had not a word for himself. Neither could the young girl answer anything to the cutting speeches which he mentally made her as he sat alone chewing the end of his cigar; and he was not moved by the imploring looks which his fancy painted in her face, when he made believe that she had meekly returned to offer him some sort of reparation. Why should she excuse herself? he asked. It was he who ought to excuse himself for having been in the way. The dialogue went on at length, with every advantage to the inventor.

He was finally aware of some one standing near and looking down at him. It was the second mate, who supported himself in a conversational posture by the hand which he stretched to the shrouds above their heads. "Are you a good sailor, Mr. Staniford?" he inquired. He and Staniford were friends in their way, and had talked together before this.

"Do you mean seasickness? Why?" Staniford looked up at the mate's face.

"Well, we're going to get it, I guess, before long. We shall soon be off the Spanish coast. We've had a great run so far."

"If it comes we must stand it. But I make it a rule never to be seasick beforehand."

"Well, I ain't one to borrow trouble, either. It don't run in the family. Most of us like to chance things, I chanced it for the whole war, and I come out all right. Sometimes it don't work so well."

"Ah?" said Staniford, who knew that this was a leading remark, but forbore, as he knew Mason wished, to follow it up directly.

"One of us chanced it once too often, and of course it was a woman."

"The risk?"

"Not the risk. My oldest sister tried tamin' a tiger. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a tiger won't tame worth a cent. But her pet was such a lamb most the while that she guessed she'd chance it. It didn't work. She's at home with mother now,—three children, of course,—and he's in hell, I s'pose. He was killed 'long-side o' me at Gettysburg. Ike was a good fellow when he was sober. But my souls, the life he led that poor girl! Yes, when a man's got that tiger in him, there ought to be some quiet little war round for puttin' him out of his misery." Staniford listened silently, waiting for the mate to make the application of his grim allegory. "I s'pose I'm prejudiced; but I do hate a drunkard; and when I see one of 'em makin' up to a girl, I want to go to her, and tell her she'd better take a real tiger out the show, at once."

The idea which these words suggested sent a thrill to Staniford's heart, but he continued silent, and the mate went on, with the queer smile, which could be inferred rather than seen, working under his mustache and the humorous twinkle of his eyes evanescently evident under his cap peak.

"I don't go round criticisn' my superior officers, and I don't say anything about the responsibility the old man took. The old man's all right, accordin' to his lights; he ain't had a tiger in the family. But if that chap was to fall overboard,—well, I don't know how long it would take to lower a boat, if I was to listen to my conscience. There ain't really any help for him. He's begun too young ever to get over it. He won't be ashore at Try-East an hour before he's drunk. If our men had any spirits amongst 'em that could be begged, bought, or borrowed, he'd be drunk now, right along. Well, I'm off watch," said the mate, at the tap of bells. "Guess we'll get our little gale pretty soon."

"Good-night," said Staniford, who remained pondering. He presently rose, and walked up and down the deck. He could hear Lydia and Hicks trying that song: now the voice, and now the flute; then both together; and presently a burst of laughter. He began to be angry with her ignorance and inexperience. It became intolerable to him that a woman should be going about with no more knowledge of the world than a child, and entangling herself in relations with all sorts of people. It was shocking to think of that little sot, who had now made his infirmity known for all the ship's company, admitted to association with her which looked to common eyes like courtship. From the mate's insinuation that she ought to be warned, it was evident that they thought her interested in Hicks; and the mate had come, like Dunham, to leave the responsibility with Staniford. It only wanted now that Captain Jenness should appear with his appeal, direct or indirect.

While Staniford walked up and down, and scorned and raged at the idea that he had anything to do with the matter, the singing and fluting came to a pause in the cabin; and at the end of the next tune, which brought him to the head of the gangway stairs, he met Lydia emerging. He stopped and spoke to her, having instantly resolved, at sight of her, not to do so.

"Have you come up for breath, like a mermaid?" he asked. "Not that I'm sure mermaids do."

"Oh, no," said Lydia. "I think I dropped my handkerchief where we were sitting."

Staniford suspected, with a sudden return to a theory of her which he had already entertained, that she had not done so. But she went lightly by him, where he stood stolid, and picked it up; and now he suspected that she had dropped it there on purpose.

"You have come back to walk with me?"

"No!" said the girl indignantly. "I have not come back to walk with you!" She waited a moment; then she burst out with, "How dare you say such a thing to me? What right have you to speak to me so? What have I done to make you think that I would come back to—"

The fierce vibration in her voice made him know that her eyes were burning upon him and her lips trembling. He shrank before her passion as a man must before the justly provoked wrath of a woman, or even of a small girl.

"I stated a hope, not a fact," he said in meek uncandor. "Don't you think you ought to have done so?"

"I don't—I don't understand you," panted Lydia, confusedly arresting her bolts in mid-course.

Staniford pursued his guilty advantage; it was his only chance. "I gave way to Mr. Hicks when you had an engagement with me. I thought— you would come back to keep your engagement." He was still very meek.

"Excuse me," she said with self-reproach that would have melted the heart of any one but a man who was in the wrong, and was trying to get out of it at all hazards. "I didn't know what you meant—I—"

"If I had meant what you thought," interrupted Staniford nobly, for he could now afford to be generous, "I should have deserved much more than you said. But I hope you won't punish my awkwardness by refusing to walk with me."

He knew that she regarded him earnestly before she said, "I must get my shawl and hat."

"Let me go!" he entreated.

"You couldn't find them," she answered, as she vanished past him. She returned, and promptly laid her hand in his proffered arm; it was as if she were eager to make him amends for her harshness.

Staniford took her hand out, and held it while he bowed low toward her. "I declare myself satisfied."

"I don't understand," said Lydia, in alarm and mortification.

"When a subject has been personally aggrieved by his sovereign, his honor is restored if they merely cross swords."

The girl laughed her delight in the extravagance. She must have been more or less than woman not to have found his flattery delicious. "But we are republicans!" she said in evasion.

"To be sure, we are republicans. Well, then, Miss Blood, answer your free and equal one thing: is it a case of conscience?"

"How?" she asked, and Staniford did not recoil at the rusticity. This how for what, and the interrogative yes, still remained. Since their first walk, she had not wanted to know, in however great surprise she found herself.

"Are you going to walk with me because you had promised?"

"Why, of course," faltered Lydia.

"That isn't enough."

"Not enough?"

"Not enough. You must walk with me because you like to do so."

Lydia was silent.

"Do you like to do so?"

"I can't answer you," she said, releasing her hand from him.

"It was not fair to ask you. What I wish to do is to restore the original status. You have kept your engagement to walk with me, and your conscience is clear. Now, Miss Blood, may I have your company for a little stroll over the deck of the Aroostook?" He made her another very low bow.

"What must I say?" asked Lydia, joyously.

"That depends upon whether you consent. If you consent, you must say, 'I shall be very glad.'"

"And if I don't?"

"Oh, I can't put any such decision into words."

Lydia mused a moment. "I shall be very glad," she said, and put her hand again into the arm he offered.

As happens after such a passage they were at first silent, while they walked up and down.

"If this fine weather holds," said Staniford, "and you continue as obliging as you are to-night, you can say, when people ask you how you went to Europe, that you walked the greater part of the way. Shall you continue so obliging? Will you walk with me every fine night?" pursued Staniford.

"Do you think I'd better say so?" she asked, with the joy still in her voice.

"Oh, I can't decide for you. I merely formulate your decisions after you reach them,—if they're favorable."

"Well, then, what is this one?"

"Is it favorable?"

"You said you would formulate it." She laughed again, and Staniford started as one does when a nebulous association crystallizes into a distinctly remembered fact.

"What a curious laugh you have!" he said. "It's like a nun's laugh. Once in France I lodged near the garden of a convent where the nuns kept a girls' school, and I used to hear them laugh. You never happened to be a nun, Miss Blood?"

"No, indeed!" cried Lydia, as if scandalized.

"Oh, I merely meant in some previous existence. Of course, I didn't suppose there was a convent in South Bradfield." He felt that the girl did not quite like the little slight his irony cast upon South Bradfield, or rather upon her for never having been anywhere else. He hastened to say, "I'm sure that in the life before this you were of the South somewhere."

"Yes?" said Lydia, interested and pleased again as one must be in romantic talk about one's self. "Why do you think so?"

He bent a little over toward her, so as to look into the face she instinctively averted, while she could not help glancing at him from the corner of her eye. "You have the color and the light of the South," he said. "When you get to Italy, you will live in a perpetual mystification. You will go about in a dream of some self of yours that was native there in other days. You will find yourself retrospectively related to the olive faces and the dark eyes you meet; you will recognize sisters and cousins in the patrician ladies when you see their portraits in the palaces where you used to live in such state."

Staniford spiced his flatteries with open burlesque; the girl entered into his fantastic humor. "But if I was a nun?" she asked, gayly.

"Oh, I forgot. You were a nun. There was a nun in Venice once, about two hundred years ago, when you lived there, and a young English lord who was passing through the town was taken to the convent to hear her sing; for she was not only of 'an admirable beauty,' as he says, but sang 'extremely well.' She sang to him through the grating of the convent, and when she stopped he said, 'Die whensoever you will, you need to change neither voice nor face to be an angel!' Do you think— do you dimly recollect anything that makes you think—it might— Consider carefully: the singing extremely well, and—" He leant over again, and looked up into her face, which again she could not wholly withdraw.

"No, no!" she said, still in his mood.

"Well, you must allow it was a pretty speech."

"Perhaps," said Lydia, with sudden gravity, in which there seemed to Staniford a tender insinuation of reproach, "he was laughing at her."

"If he was, he was properly punished. He went on to Rome, and when he came back to Venice the beautiful nun was dead. He thought that his words 'seemed fatal.' Do you suppose it would kill you now to be jested with?"

"I don't think people like it generally."

"Why, Miss Blood, you are intense!"

"I don't know what you mean by that," said Lydia.

"You like to take things seriously. You can't bear to think that people are not the least in earnest, even when they least seem so."

"Yes," said the girl, thoughtfully, "perhaps that's true. Should you like to be made fun of, yourself?"

"I shouldn't mind it, I fancy, though it would depend a great deal upon who made fun of me. I suppose that women always laugh at men,—at their clumsiness, their want of tact, the fit of their clothes."

"I don't know. I should not do that with any one I—"

"You liked? Oh, none of them do!" cried Staniford.

"I was not going to say that," faltered the girl.

"What were you going to say?"

She waited a moment. "Yes, I was going to say that," she assented with a sigh of helpless veracity. "What makes you laugh?" she asked, in distress.

"Something I like. I'm different from you: I laugh at what I like; I like your truthfulness,—it's charming."

"I didn't know that truth need be charming."

"It had better be, in women, if it's to keep even with the other thing." Lydia seemed shocked; she made a faint, involuntary motion to withdraw her hand, but he closed his arm upon it. "Don't condemn me for thinking that fibbing is charming. I shouldn't like it at all in you. Should you in me?"

"I shouldn't in any one," said Lydia.

"Then what is it you dislike in me?" he suddenly demanded.

"I didn't say that I disliked anything in you."

"But you have made fun of something in me?"

"No, no!"

"Then it wasn't the stirring of a guilty conscience when you asked me whether I should like to be made fun of? I took it for granted you'd been doing it."

"You are very suspicious."

"Yes; and what else?"

"Oh, you like to know just what every one thinks and feels."

"Go on!" cried Staniford. "Analyze me, formulate me!"

"That's all."

"All I come to?"

"All I have to say."

"That's very little. Now, I'll begin on you. You don't care what people think or feel."

"Oh, yes, I do. I care too much."

"Do you care what I think?"

"Yes."

"Then I think you're too unsuspicious."

"Ought I to suspect somebody?" she asked, lightly.

"Oh, that's the way with all your sex. One asks you to be suspicious, and you ask whom you shall suspect. You can do nothing in the abstract. I should like to be suspicious for you. Will you let me?"

"Oh, yes, if you like to be."

"Thanks. I shall be terribly vigilant,—a perfect dragon. And you really invest me with authority?"

"Yes."

"That's charming." Staniford drew a long breath. After a space of musing, he said, "I thought I should be able to begin by attacking some one else, but I must commence at home, and denounce myself as quite unworthy of walking to and fro, and talking nonsense to you. You must beware of me, Miss Blood."

"Why?" asked the girl.

"I am very narrow-minded and prejudiced, and I have violent antipathies. I shouldn't be able to do justice to any one I disliked."

"I think that's the trouble with all of us," said Lydia.

"Oh, but only in degree. I should not allow, if I could help it, a man whom I thought shabby, and coarse at heart, the privilege of speaking to any one I valued,—to my sister, for instance. It would shock me to find her have any taste in common with such a man, or amused by him. Don't you understand?"

"Yes," said Lydia. It seemed to him as if by some infinitely subtle and unconscious affinition she relaxed toward him as they walked. This was incomparably sweet and charming to Staniford,—too sweet as recognition of his protecting friendship to be questioned as anything else. He felt sure that she had taken his meaning, and he rested content from further trouble in regard to what it would have been impossible to express. Her tacit confidence touched a kindred spring in him, and he began to talk to her of himself: not of his character or opinions,—they had already gone over them,—but of his past life, and his future. Their strangeness to her gave certain well-worn topics novelty, and the familiar project of a pastoral career in the far West invested itself with a color of romance which it had not worn before. She tried to remember, at his urgence, something about her childhood in California; and she told him a great deal more about South Bradfield. She described its characters and customs, and, from no vantage-ground or stand-point but her native feeling of their oddity, and what seemed her sympathy with him, made him see them as one might whose life had not been passed among them. Then they began to compare their own traits, and amused themselves to find how many they had in common. Staniford related a singular experience of his on a former voyage to Europe, when he dreamed of a collision, and woke to hear a great trampling and uproar on deck, which afterwards turned out to have been caused by their bare escape from running into an iceberg. She said that she had had strange dreams, too, but mostly when she was a little girl; once she had had a presentiment that troubled her, but it did not come true. They both said they did not believe in such things, and agreed that it was only people's love of mystery that kept them noticed. He permitted himself to help her, with his disengaged hand, to draw her shawl closer about the shoulder that was away from him. He gave the action a philosophical and impersonal character by saying immediately afterwards: "The sea is really the only mystery left us, and that will never be explored. They circumnavigate the whole globe,—" here he put the gathered shawl into the fingers which she stretched through his arm to take it, and she said, "Oh, thank you!"—"but they don't describe the sea. War and plague and famine submit to the ameliorations of science,"—the closely drawn shawl pressed her against his shoulder; his mind wandered; he hardly knew what he was saying,—"but the one utterly inexorable calamity—the same now as when the first sail was spread—is a shipwreck."

"Yes," she said, with a deep inspiration. And now they walked back and forth in silence broken only by a casual word or desultory phrase. Once Staniford had thought the conditions of these promenades perilously suggestive of love-making; another time he had blamed himself for not thinking of this; now he neither thought nor blamed himself for not thinking. The fact justified itself, as if it had been the one perfectly right and wise thing in a world where all else might be questioned.

"Isn't it pretty late?" she asked, at last.

"If you're tired, we'll sit down," he said.

"What time is it?" she persisted.

"Must I look?" he pleaded. They went to a lantern, and he took out his watch and sprang the case open. "Look!" he said. "I sacrifice myself on the altar of truth." They bent their heads low together over the watch; it was not easy to make out the time. "It's nine o'clock," said Staniford.

"It can't be; it was half past when I came up," answered Lydia.

"One hand's at twelve and the other at nine," he said, conclusively.

"Oh, then it's a quarter to twelve." She caught away her hand from his arm, and fled to the gangway. "I didn't dream it was so late."

The pleasure which her confession brought to his face faded at sight of Hicks, who was turning the last pages of a novel by the cabin lamp, as he followed Lydia in. It was the book that Staniford had given her.

"Hullo!" said Hicks, with companionable ease, looking up at her. "Been having quite a tramp."

She did not seem troubled by the familiarity of an address that incensed Staniford almost to the point of taking Hicks from his seat, and tossing him to the other end of the cabin. "Oh, you've finished my book," she said. "You must tell me how you like it, to-morrow."

"I doubt it," said Hicks. "I'm going to be seasick to-morrow. The captain's been shaking his head over the barometer and powwowing with the first officer. Something's up, and I guess it's a gale. Good-by; I shan't see you again for a week or so."

He nodded jocosely to Lydia, and dropped his eyes again to his book, ignoring Staniford's presence. The latter stood a moment breathing quick; then he controlled himself and went into his room. His coming roused Dunham, who looked up from his pillow. "What time is it?" he asked, stupidly.

"Twelve," said Staniford.

"Had a pleasant walk?"

"If you still think," said Staniford, savagely, "that she's painfully interested in you, you can make your mind easy. She doesn't care for either of us."

"Either of us?" echoed Dunham. He roused himself.

"Oh, go to sleep; go to sleep!" cried Staniford.



XV.

The foreboded storm did not come so soon as had been feared, but the beautiful weather which had lasted so long was lost in a thickened sky and a sullen sea. The weather had changed with Staniford, too. The morning after the events last celebrated, he did not respond to the glance which Lydia gave him when they met, and he hardened his heart to her surprise, and shunned being alone with her. He would not admit to himself any reason for his attitude, and he could not have explained to her the mystery that at first visibly grieved her, and then seemed merely to benumb her. But the moment came when he ceased to take a certain cruel pleasure in it, and he approached her one morning on deck, where she stood holding fast to the railing where she usually sat, and said, as if there had been no interval of estrangement between them, but still coldly, "We have had our last walk for the present, Miss Blood. I hope you will grieve a little for my loss."

She turned on him a look that cut him to the heart, with what he fancied its reproach and its wonder. She did not reply at once, and then she did not reply to his hinted question.

"Mr. Staniford," she began. It was the second time he had heard her pronounce his name; he distinctly remembered the first.

"Well?" he said.

"I want to speak to you about lending that book to Mr. Hicks. I ought to have asked you first."

"Oh, no," said Staniford. "It was yours."

"You gave it to me," she returned.

"Well, then, it was yours,—to keep, to lend, to throw away."

"And you didn't mind my lending it to him?" she pursued. "I—"

She stopped, and Staniford hesitated, too. Then he said, "I didn't dislike your lending it; I disliked his having it. I will acknowledge that."

She looked up at him as if she were going to speak, but checked herself, and glanced away. The ship was plunging heavily, and the livid waves were racing before the wind. The horizon was lit with a yellow brightness in the quarter to which she turned, and a pallid gleam defined her profile. Captain Jenness was walking fretfully to and fro; he glanced now at the yellow glare, and now cast his eye aloft at the shortened sail. While Staniford stood questioning whether she meant to say anything more, or whether, having discharged her conscience of an imagined offense, she had now reached one of her final, precipitous silences, Captain Jenness suddenly approached them, and said to him, "I guess you'd better go below with Miss Blood."

The storm that followed had its hazards, but Staniford's consciousness was confined to its discomforts. The day came, and then the dark came, and both in due course went, and came again. Where he lay in his berth, and whirled and swung, and rose and sank, as lonely as a planetary fragment tossing in space, he heard the noises of the life without. Amidst the straining of the ship, which was like the sharp sweep of a thunder-shower on the deck overhead, there plunged at irregular intervals the wild trample of heavily-booted feet, and now and then the voices of the crew answering the shouted orders made themselves hollowly audible. In the cabin there was talking, and sometimes even laughing. Sometimes he heard the click of knives and forks, the sardonic rattle of crockery. After the first insane feeling that somehow he must get ashore and escape from his torment, he hardened himself to it through an immense contempt, equally insane, for the stupidity of the sea, its insensate uproar, its blind and ridiculous and cruel mischievousness. Except for this delirious scorn he was a surface of perfect passivity.

Dunham, after a day of prostration, had risen, and had perhaps shortened his anguish by his resolution. He had since taken up his quarters on a locker in the cabin; he looked in now and then upon Staniford, with a cup of tea, or a suggestion of something light to eat; once he even dared to boast of the sublimity of the ocean. Staniford stared at him with eyes of lack-lustre indifference, and waited for him to be gone. But he lingered to say, "You would laugh to see what a sea-bird our lady is! She hasn't been sick a minute. And Hicks, you'll be glad to know, is behaving himself very well. Really, I don't think we've done the fellow justice. I think you've overshadowed him, and that he's needed your absence to show himself to advantage."

Staniford disdained any comment on this except a fierce "Humph!" and dismissed Dunham by turning his face to the wall. He refused to think of what he had said. He lay still and suffered indefinitely, and no longer waited for the end of the storm. There had been times when he thought with acquiescence of going to the bottom, as a probable conclusion; now he did not expect anything. At last, one night, he felt by inexpressibly minute degrees something that seemed surcease of his misery. It might have been the end of all things, for all he cared; but as the lull deepened, he slept without knowing what it was, and when he woke in the morning he found the Aroostook at anchor in smooth water.

She was lying in the roads at Gibraltar, and before her towered the embattled rock. He crawled on deck after a while. The captain was going ashore, and had asked such of his passengers as liked, to go with him and see the place. When Staniford appeared, Dunham was loyally refusing to leave his friend till he was fairly on foot. At sight of him they suspended their question long enough to welcome him back to animation, with the patronage with which well people hail a convalescent. Lydia looked across the estrangement of the past days with a sort of inquiry, and Hicks chose to come forward and accept a cold touch of the hand from him. Staniford saw, with languid observance, that Lydia was very fresh and bright; she was already equipped for the expedition, and could never have had any doubt in her mind as to going. She had on a pretty walking dress which he had not seen before, and a hat with the rim struck sharply upward behind, and her masses of dense, dull black hair pulled up and fastened somewhere on the top of her head. Her eyes shyly sparkled under the abrupt descent of the hat-brim over her forehead.

His contemptuous rejection of the character of invalid prevailed with Dunham; and Staniford walked to another part of the ship, to cut short the talk about himself, and saw them row away.

"Well, you've had a pretty tough time, they say," said the second mate, lounging near him. "I don't see any fun in seasickness myself."

"It's a ridiculous sort of misery," said Staniford.

"I hope we shan't have anything worse on board when that chap gets back. The old man thinks he can keep an eye on him." The mate was looking after the boat.

"The captain says he hasn't any money," Staniford remarked carelessly. The mate went away without saying anything more, and Staniford returned to the cabin, where he beheld without abhorrence the preparations for his breakfast. But he had not a great appetite, in spite of his long fast. He found himself rather light-headed, and came on deck again after a while, and stretched himself in Hicks's steamer chair, where Lydia usually sat in it. He fell into a dull, despairing reverie, in which he blamed himself for not having been more explicit with her. He had merely expressed his dislike of Hicks; but expressed without reasons it was a groundless dislike, which she had evidently not understood, or had not cared to heed; and since that night, now so far away, when he had spoken to her, he had done everything he could to harden her against himself. He had treated her with a stupid cruelty, which a girl like her would resent to the last; he had forced her to take refuge in the politeness of a man from whom he was trying to keep her.

His heart paused when he saw the boat returning in the afternoon without Hicks. The others reported that they had separated before dinner, and that they had not seen him since, though Captain Jenness had spent an hour trying to look him up before starting back to the ship. The captain wore a look of guilty responsibility, mingled with intense exasperation, the two combining in as much haggardness as his cheerful visage could express. "If he's here by six o'clock," he said, grimly, "all well and good. If not, the Aroostook sails, any way."

Lydia crept timidly below. Staniford complexly raged to see that the anxiety about Hicks had blighted the joy of the day for her.

"How the deuce could he get about without any money?" he demanded of Dunham, as soon as they were alone.

Dunham vainly struggled to look him in the eye. "Staniford," he faltered, with much more culpability than some criminals would confess a murder, "I lent him five dollars!"

"You lent him five dollars!" gasped Staniford.

"Yes," replied Dunham, miserably; "he got me aside, and asked me for it. What could I do? What would you have done yourself?"

Staniford made no answer. He walked some paces away, and then returned to where Dunham stood helpless. "He's lying about there dead-drunk, somewhere, I suppose. By Heaven, I could almost wish he was. He couldn't come back, then, at any rate."

The time lagged along toward the moment appointed by the captain, and the preparations for the ship's departure were well advanced, when a boat was seen putting out from shore with two rowers, and rapidly approaching the Aroostook. In the stern, as it drew nearer, the familiar figure of Hicks discovered itself in the act of waving a handkerchief He scrambled up the side of the ship in excellent spirits, and gave Dunham a detailed account of his adventures since they had parted. As always happens with such scapegraces, he seemed to have had a good time, however he had spoiled the pleasure of the others. At tea, when Lydia had gone away, he clapped down a sovereign near Dunham's plate.

"Your five dollars," he said.

"Why, how—" Dunham began.

"How did I get on without it? My dear boy, I sold my watch! A ship's time is worth no more than a setting hen's,—eh, captain?—and why take note of it? Besides, I always like to pay my debts promptly: there's nothing mean about me. I'm not going ashore again without my pocket-book, I can tell you." He winked shamelessly at Captain Jenness. "If you hadn't been along, Dunham, I couldn't have made a raise, I suppose. You wouldn't have lent me five dollars, Captain Jenness."

"No, I wouldn't," said the captain, bluntly.

"And I believe you'd have sailed without me, if I hadn't got back on time."

"I would," said the captain, as before.

Hicks threw back his head, and laughed. Probably no human being had ever before made so free with Captain Jenness at his own table; but the captain must have felt that this contumacy was part of the general risk which he had taken in taking Hicks, and he contented himself with maintaining a silence that would have appalled a less audacious spirit. Hicks's gayety, however, was not to be quelled in that way.

"Gibraltar wouldn't be a bad place to put up at for a while," he said. "Lots of good fellows among the officers, they say, and fun going all the while. First-class gunning in the Cork Woods at St. Roque. If it hadn't been for the res angusta domi,—you know what I mean, captain,—I should have let you get along with your old dug-out, as the gentleman in the water said to Noah." His hilarity had something alarmingly knowing in it; there was a wildness in the pleasure with which he bearded the captain, like that of a man in his first cups; yet he had not been drinking. He played round the captain's knowledge of the sanative destitution in which he was making the voyage with mocking recurrence; but he took himself off to bed early, and the captain came through his trials with unimpaired temper. Dunham disappeared not long afterwards; and Staniford's vague hope that Lydia might be going on deck to watch the lights of the town die out behind the ship as they sailed away was disappointed. The second mate made a point of lounging near him where he sat alone in their wonted place.

"Well," he said, "he did come back sober."

"Yes," said Staniford.

"Next to not comin' back at all," the mate continued, "I suppose it was the best thing he could do." He lounged away. Neither his voice nor his manner had that quality of disappointment which characterizes those who have mistakenly prophesied evil. Staniford had a mind to call him back, and ask him what he meant; but he refrained, and he went to bed at last resolved to unburden himself of the whole Hicks business once for all. He felt that he had had quite enough of it, both in the abstract and in its relation to Lydia.



XVI.

Hicks did not join the others at breakfast. They talked of what Lydia had seen at Gibraltar, where Staniford had been on a former voyage. Dunham had made it a matter of conscience to know all about it beforehand from his guide-books, and had risen early that morning to correct his science by his experience in a long entry in the diary which he was keeping for Miss Hibbard. The captain had the true sea-farer's ignorance, and was amused at the things reported by his passengers of a place where he had been ashore so often; Hicks's absence doubtless relieved him, but he did not comment on the cabin-boy's announcement that he was still asleep, except to order him let alone.

They were seated at their one o'clock dinner before the recluse made any sign. Then he gave note of his continued existence by bumping and thumping sounds within his state-room, as if some one were dressing there in a heavy sea.

"Mr. Hicks seems to be taking his rough weather retrospectively," said Staniford, with rather tremulous humor.

The door was flung open, and Hicks reeled out, staying himself by the door-knob. Even before he appeared, a reek of strong waters had preceded him. He must have been drinking all night. His face was flushed, and his eyes were bloodshot. He had no collar on; but he wove a cravat and otherwise he was accurately and even fastidiously dressed. He balanced himself by the door-knob, and measured the distance he had to make before reaching his place at the table, smiling, and waving a delicate handkerchief, which he held in his hand: "Spilt c'logne, tryin' to scent my hic—handkerchief. Makes deuced bad smell—too much c'logne; smells—alcoholic. Thom's, bear a hand, 's good f'low. No? All right, go on with your waitin'. B-ic—business b'fore pleasure, 's feller says. Play it alone, I guess."

The boy had shrunk back in dismay, and Hicks contrived to reach his place by one of those precipitate dashes with which drunken men attain a point, when the luck is with them. He looked smilingly round the circle of faces. Staniford and the captain exchanged threatening looks of intelligence, while Mr. Watterson and Dunham subordinately waited their motion. But the advantage, as in such cases, was on the side of Hicks. He knew it, with a drunkard's subtlety, and was at his ease.

"No app'tite, friends; but thought I'd come out, keep you from feeling lonesome." He laughed and hiccuped, and smiled upon them all. "Well, cap'n," he continued, "'covered from 'tigues day, sterday? You look blooming's usual. Thom's, pass the—pass the—victuals lively, my son, and fetch along coffee soon. Some the friends up late, and want their coffee. Nothing like coffee, carry off'fee's." He winked to the men, all round; and then added, to Lydia: "Sorry see you in this state—I mean, sorry see me—Can't make it that way either; up stump on both routes. What I mean is, sorry hadn't coffee first. But you're all right—all right! Like see anybody offer you disrespec', 'n I'm around. Tha's all."

Till he addressed her, Lydia had remained motionless, first with bewilderment, and then with open abhorrence. She could hardly have seen in South Bradfield a man who had been drinking. Even in haying, or other sharpest stress of farmwork, our farmer and his men stay themselves with nothing stronger than molasses-water, or, in extreme cases, cider with a little corn soaked in it; and the Mill Village, where she had taught school, was under the iron rule of a local vote for prohibition. She stared in stupefaction at Hicks's heated, foolish face; she started at his wild movements, and listened with dawning intelligence to his hiccup-broken speech, with its thickened sibilants and its wandering emphasis. When he turned to her, and accompanied his words with a reassuring gesture, she recoiled, and as if breaking an ugly fascination she gave a low, shuddering cry, and looked at Staniford.

"Thomas," he said, "Miss Blood was going to take her dessert on deck to-day. Dunham?"

Dunham sprang to his feet, and led her out of the cabin.

The movement met Hicks's approval. "Tha's right; 'sert on deck, 'joy landscape and pudding together,—Rhine steamer style. All right. Be up there m'self soon's I get my coffee." He winked again with drunken sharpness. "I know wha's what. Be up there m'self, 'n a minute."

"If you offer to go up," said Staniford, in a low voice, as soon as Lydia was out of the way, "I'll knock you down!"

"Captain," said Mr. Watterson, venturing, perhaps for the first time in his whole maritime history, upon a suggestion to his superior officer, "shall I clap him in irons?"

"Clap him in irons!" roared Captain Jenness. "Clap him in bed! Look here, you!" He turned to Hicks, but the latter, who had been bristling at Staniford's threat, now relaxed in a crowing laugh:—

"Tha's right, captain. Irons no go, 'cept in case mutiny; bed perfectly legal 't all times. Bed is good. But trouble is t' enforce it."

"Where's your bottle?" demanded the captain, rising from the seat in which a paralysis of fury had kept him hitherto. "I want your bottle."

"Oh, bottle's all right! Bottle's under pillow. Empty,—empty's Jonah's gourd; 'nother sea-faring party,—Jonah. S'cure the shadow ere the substance fade. Drunk all the brandy, old boy. Bottle's a canteen; 'vantage of military port to houseless stranger. Brought the brandy on board under my coat; nobody noticed,—so glad get me back. Prodigal son's return,—fatted calf under his coat."

The reprobate ended his boastful confession with another burst of hiccuping, and Staniford helplessly laughed.

"Do me proud," said Hicks. "Proud, I 'sure you. Gentleman, every time, Stanny. Know good thing when you see it—hear it, I mean."

"Look here, Hicks," said Staniford, choosing to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, if any good end might be gained by it. "You know you're drunk, and you're not fit to be about. Go back to bed, that's a good fellow; and come out again, when you're all right. You don't want to do anything you'll be sorry for."

"No, no! No, you don't, Stanny. Coffee'll make me all right. Coffee always does. Coffee—Heaven's lash besh gift to man. 'Scovered subse-subs'quently to grape. See? Comes after claret in course of nature. Captain doesn't understand the 'lusion. All right, captain. Little learning dangerous thing." He turned sharply on Mr. Watterson, who had remained inertly in his place. "Put me in irons, heh! You put me in irons, you old Triton. Put me in irons, will you?" His amiable mood was passing; before one could say so, it was past. He was meditating means of active offense. He gathered up the carving-knife and fork, and held them close under Mr. Watterson's nose. "Smell that!" he said, and frowned as darkly as a man of so little eyebrow could.

At this senseless defiance Staniford, in spite of himself, broke into another laugh, and even Captain Jenness grinned. Mr. Watterson sat with his head drawn as far back as possible, and with his nose wrinkled at the affront offered it. "Captain," he screamed, appealing even in this extremity to his superior, "shall I fetch him one?"

"No, no!" cried Staniford, springing from his chair; "don't hit him! He isn't responsible. Let's get him into his room."

"Fetch me one, heh?" said Hicks, rising, with dignity, and beginning to turn up his cuffs. "One! It'll take more than one, fetch me. Stan' up, 'f you're man enough." He was squaring at Mr. Watterson, when he detected signs of strategic approach in Staniford and Captain Jenness. He gave a wild laugh, and shrank into a corner. "No! No, you don't, boys," he said.

They continued their advance, one on either side, and reinforced by Mr. Watterson hemmed him in. The drunken man has the advantage of his sober brother in never seeming to be on the alert. Hicks apparently entered into the humor of the affair. "Sur-hic-surrender!" he said, with a smile in his heavy eyes. He darted under the extended arms of Captain Jenness, who was leading the centre of the advance, and before either wing could touch him he was up the gangway and on the deck.

Captain Jenness indulged one of those expressions, very rare with him, which are supposed to be forgiven to good men in moments of extreme perplexity, and Mr. Watterson profited by the precedent to unburden his heart in a paraphrase of the captain's language. Staniford's laugh had as much cursing in it as their profanity.

He mechanically followed Hicks to the deck, prepared to renew the attempt for his capture there. But Hicks had not stopped near Dunham and Lydia. He had gone forward on the other side of the ship, and was leaning quietly on the rail, and looking into the sea. Staniford paused irresolute for a moment, and then sat down beside Lydia, and they all tried to feign that nothing unpleasant had happened, or was still impending. But their talk had the wandering inconclusiveness which was inevitable, and the eyes of each from time to time furtively turned toward Hicks.

For half an hour he hardly changed his position. At the end of that time, they found him looking intently at them; and presently he began to work slowly back to the waist of the ship, but kept to his own side. He was met on the way by the second mate, when nearly opposite where they sat.

"Ain't you pretty comfortable where you are?" they heard the mate asking. "Guess I wouldn't go aft any further just yet."

"You're all right, Mason," Hicks answered. "Going below—down cellar, 's feller says; go to bed."

"Well, that's a pious idea," said the mate. "You couldn't do better than that. I'll lend you a hand."

"Don't care 'f I do," responded Hicks, taking the mate's proffered arm. But he really seemed to need it very little; he walked perfectly well, and he did not look across at the others again.

At the head of the gangway he encountered Captain Jenness and Mr. Watterson, who had completed the perquisition they had remained to make in his state-room. Mr. Watterson came up empty-handed; but the captain bore the canteen in which the common enemy had been so artfully conveyed on board. He walked, darkly scowling, to the rail, and flung the canteen into the sea. Hicks, who had saluted his appearance with a glare as savage as his own, yielded to his whimsical sense of the futility of this vengeance. He gave his fleeting, drunken laugh: "Good old boy, Captain Jenness. Means well—means well. But lacks—lacks—forecast. Pounds of cure, but no prevention. Not much on bite, but death on bark. Heh?" He waggled his hand offensively at the captain, and disappeared, loosely floundering down the cabin stairs, holding hard by the hand-rail, and fumbling round with his foot for the steps before he put it down.

"As soon as he's in his room, Mr. Watterson, you lock him in." The captain handed his officer a key, and walked away forward, with a hang-dog look on his kindly face, which he kept averted from his passengers.

The sound of Hicks's descent had hardly ceased when clapping and knocking noises were heard again, and the face of the troublesome little wretch reappeared. He waved Mr. Watterson aside with his left hand, and in default of specific orders the latter allowed him to mount to the deck again. Hicks stayed himself a moment, and lurched to where Staniford and Dunham sat with Lydia.

"What I wish say Miss Blood is," he began,—"what I wish say is, peculiar circumstances make no difference with man if man's gentleman. What I say is, everybody 'spec's—What I say is, circumstances don't alter cases; lady's a lady—What I want do is beg you fellows' pardon—beg her pardon—if anything I said that firs' morning—"

"Go away!" cried Staniford, beginning to whiten round the nostrils. "Hold your tongue!"

Hicks fell back a pace, and looked at him with the odd effect of now seeing him for the first time. "What you want?" he asked. "What you mean? Slingin' criticism ever since you came on this ship! What you mean by it? Heh? What you mean?"

Staniford rose, and Lydia gave a start. He cast an angry look at her. "Do you think I'd hurt him?" he demanded.

Hicks went on: "Sorry, very sorry, 'larm a lady,—specially lady we all respec'. But this particular affair. Touch—touches my honor. You said," he continued, "'f I came on deck, you'd knock me down. Why don't you do it? Wha's the matter with you? Sling criticism ever since you been on ship, and 'fraid do it! 'Fraid, you hear? 'F-ic—'fraid, I say." Staniford slowly walked away forward, and Hicks followed him, threatening him with word and gesture. Now and then Staniford thrust him aside, and addressed him some expostulation, and Hicks laughed and submitted. Then, after a silent excursion to the other side of the ship, he would return and renew his one-sided quarrel. Staniford seemed to forbid the interference of the crew, and alternately soothed and baffled his tedious adversary, who could still be heard accusing him of slinging criticism, and challenging him to combat. He leaned with his back to the rail, and now looked quietly into Hicks's crazy face, when the latter paused in front of him, and now looked down with a worried, wearied air. At last he crossed to the other side, and began to come aft again.

"Mr. Dunham!" cried Lydia, starting up. "I know what Mr. Staniford wants to do. He wants to keep him away from me. Let me go down to the cabin. I can't walk; please help me!" Her eyes were full of tears, and the hand trembled that she laid on Dunham's arm, but she controlled her voice.

He softly repressed her, while he intently watched Staniford. "No, no!"

"But he can't bear it much longer," she pleaded. "And if he should—"

"Staniford would never strike him," said Dunham, calmly. "Don't be afraid. Look! He's coming back with him; he's trying to get him below; they'll shut him up there. That's the only chance. Sit down, please." She dropped into her seat, hid her eyes for an instant, and then fixed them again on the two young men.

Hicks had got between Staniford and the rail. He seized him by the arm, and, pulling him round, suddenly struck at him. It was too much for his wavering balance: his feet shot from under him, and he went backwards in a crooked whirl and tumble, over the vessel's side.

Staniford uttered a cry of disgust and rage. "Oh, you little brute!" he shouted, and with what seemed a single gesture he flung off his coat and the low shoes he wore, and leaped the railing after him.

The cry of "Man overboard!" rang round the ship, and Captain Jenness's order, "Down with your helm! Lower a boat, Mr. Mason!" came, quick as it was, after the second mate had prepared to let go; and he and two of the men were in the boat, and she was sliding from her davits, while the Aroostook was coming up to the light wind and losing headway.

When the boat touched the water, two heads had appeared above the surface terribly far away. "Hold on, for God's sake! We'll be there in a second."

"All right!" Staniford's voice called back. "Be quick." The heads rose and sank with the undulation of the water. The swift boat appeared to crawl.

By the time it reached the place where they had been seen, the heads disappeared, and the men in the boat seemed to be rowing blindly about. The mate stood upright. Suddenly he dropped and clutched at something over the boat's side. The people on the ship could see three hands on her gunwale; a figure was pulled up into the boat, and proved to be Hicks; then Staniford, seizing the gunwale with both hands, swung himself in.

A shout went up from the ship, and Staniford waved his hand. Lydia waited where she hung upon the rail, clutching it hard with her hands, till the boat was along-side. Then from white she turned fire-red, and ran below and locked herself in her room.



XVII.

Dunham followed Staniford to their room, and helped him off with his wet clothes. He tried to say something ideally fit in recognition of his heroic act, and he articulated some bald commonplaces of praise, and shook Staniford's clammy hand. "Yes," said the latter, submitting; "but the difficulty about a thing of this sort is that you don't know whether you haven't been an ass. It has been pawed over so much by the romancers that you don't feel like a hero in real life, but a hero of fiction. I've a notion that Hicks and I looked rather ridiculous going over the ship's side; I know we did, coming back. No man can reveal his greatness of soul in wet clothes. Did Miss Blood laugh?"

"Staniford!" said Dunham, in an accent of reproach. "You do her great injustice. She felt what you had done in the way you would wish,—if you cared."

"What did she say?" asked Staniford, quickly.

"Nothing. But—"

"That's an easy way of expressing one's admiration of heroic behavior. I hope she'll stick to that line. I hope she won't feel it at all necessary to say anything in recognition of my prowess; it would be extremely embarrassing. I've got Hicks back again, but I couldn't stand any gratitude for it. Not that I'm ashamed of the performance. Perhaps if it had been anybody but Hicks, I should have waited for them to lower a boat. But Hicks had peculiar claims. You couldn't let a man you disliked so much welter round a great while. Where is the poor old fellow? Is he clothed and in his right mind again?"

"He seemed to be sober enough," said Dunham, "when he came on board; but I don't think he's out yet."

"We must let Thomas in to gather up this bathing-suit," observed Staniford. "What a Newportish flavor it gives the place!" He was excited, and in great gayety of spirits.

He and Dunham went out into the cabin, where they found Captain Jenness pacing to and fro. "Well, sir," he said, taking Staniford's hand, and crossing his right with his left, so as to include Dunham in his congratulations, "you ought to have been a sailor!" Then he added, as if the unqualified praise might seem fulsome, "But if you'd been a sailor, you wouldn't have tried a thing like that. You'd have had more sense. The chances were ten to one against you."

Staniford laughed. "Was it so bad as that? I shall begin to respect myself."

The captain did not answer, but his iron grip closed hard upon Staniford's hand, and he frowned in keen inspection of Hicks, who at that moment came out of his state-room, looking pale and quite sobered. Captain Jenness surveyed him from head to foot, and then from foot to head, and pausing at the level of his eyes he said, still holding Staniford by the hand: "The trouble with a man aboard ship is that he can't turn a blackguard out-of-doors just when he likes. The Aroostook puts in at Messina. You'll be treated well till we get there, and then if I find you on my vessel five minutes after she comes to anchor, I'll heave you overboard, and I'll take care that nobody jumps after you. Do you hear? And you won't find me doing any such fool kindness as I did when I took you on board, soon again."

"Oh, I say, Captain Jenness," began Staniford.

"He's all right," interrupted Hicks. "I'm a blackguard; I know it; and I don't think I was worth fishing up. But you've done it, and I mustn't go back on you, I suppose." He lifted his poor, weak, bad little face, and looked Staniford in the eyes with a pathos that belied the slang of his speech. The latter released his hand from Captain Jenness and gave it to Hicks, who wrung it, as he kept looking him in the eyes, while his lips twitched pitifully, like a child's. The captain gave a quick snort either of disgust or of sympathy, and turned abruptly about and bundled himself up out of the cabin.

"I say!" exclaimed Staniford, "a cup of coffee wouldn't be bad, would it? Let's have some coffee, Thomas, about as quick as the cook can make it," he added, as the boy came out from his stateroom with a lump of wet clothes in his hands. "You wanted some coffee a little while ago," he said to Hicks, who hung his head at the joke.

For the rest of the day Staniford was the hero of the ship. The men looked at him from a distance, and talked of him together. Mr. Watterson hung about whenever Captain Jenness drew near him, as if in the hope of overhearing some acceptable expression in which he could second his superior officer. Failing this, and being driven to despair, "Find the water pretty cold, sir?" he asked at last; and after that seemed to feel that he had discharged his duty as well as might be under the extraordinary circumstances.

The second mate, during the course of the afternoon, contrived to pass near Staniford. "Why, there wa'n't no need of your doing it," he said, in a bated tone. "I could ha' had him out with the boat, soon enough."

Staniford treasured up these meagre expressions of the general approbation, and would not have had them different. From this time, within the narrow bounds that brought them all necessarily together in some sort, Hicks abolished himself as nearly as possible. He chose often to join the second mate at meals, which Mr. Mason, in accordance with the discipline of the ship, took apart both from the crew and his superior officers. Mason treated the voluntary outcast with a sort of sarcastic compassion, as a man whose fallen state was not without its points as a joke to the indifferent observer, and yet might appeal to the pity of one who knew such cases through the misery they inflicted. Staniford heard him telling Hicks about his brother-in-law, and dwelling upon the peculiar relief which the appearance of his name in the mortality list gave all concerned in him. Hicks listened in apathetic patience and acquiescence; but Staniford thought that he enjoyed, as much as he could enjoy anything, the second officer's frankness. For his own part, he found that having made bold to keep this man in the world he had assumed a curious responsibility towards him. It became his business to show him that he was not shunned by his fellow-creatures, to hearten and cheer him up. It was heavy work. Hicks with his joke was sometimes odious company, but he was also sometimes amusing; without it, he was of a terribly dull conversation. He accepted Staniford's friendliness too meekly for good comradery; he let it add, apparently, to his burden of gratitude, rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to sink the lower. "Deuce take him!" mused his benefactor; "he's in love with her!" But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never relented in her abhorrence of Hicks since the day of his disgrace. There seemed no scorn in her condemnation, but neither was there any mercy. In her simple life she had kept unsophisticated the severe morality of a child, and it was this that judged him, that found him unpardonable and outlawed him. He had never ventured to speak to her since that day, and Staniford never saw her look at him except when Hicks was not looking, and then with a repulsion which was very curious. Staniford could have pitied him, and might have interceded so far as to set him nearer right in her eyes; but he felt that she avoided him, too; there were no more walks on the deck, no more readings in the cabin; the checker-board, which professed to be the History of England, In 2 Vols., remained a closed book. The good companionship of a former time, in which they had so often seemed like brothers and sister, was gone. "Hicks has smashed our Happy Family," Staniford said to Dunham, with little pleasure in his joke. "Upon my word, I think I had better have left him in the water." Lydia kept a great deal in her own room; sometimes when Staniford came down into the cabin he found her there, talking with Thomas of little things that amuse children; sometimes when he went on deck in the evening she would be there in her accustomed seat, and the second mate, with face and figure half averted, and staying himself by one hand on the shrouds, would be telling her something to which she listened with lifted chin and attentive eyes. The mate would go away when Staniford appeared, but that did not help matters, for then Lydia went too. At table she said very little; she had the effect of placing herself more and more under the protection of the captain. The golden age, when they had all laughed and jested so freely and fearlessly together, under her pretty sovereignty, was past, and they seemed far dispersed in a common exile. Staniford imagined she grew pale and thin; he asked Dunham if he did not see it, but Dunham had not observed. "I think matters have taken a very desirable shape, socially," he said. "Miss Blood will reach her friends as fancy-free as she left home."

"Yes," Staniford assented vaguely; "that's the great object."

After a while Dunham asked, "She's never said anything to you about your rescuing Hicks?"

"Rescuing? What rescuing? They'd have had him out in another minute, any way," said Staniford, fretfully. Then he brooded angrily upon the subject: "But I can tell you what: considering all the circumstances, she might very well have said something. It looks obtuse, or it looks hard. She must have known that it all came about through my trying to keep him away from her."

"Oh, yes; she knew that," said Dunham; "she spoke of it at the time. But I thought—"

"Oh, she did! Then I think that it would be very little if she recognized the mere fact that something had happened."

"Why, you said you hoped she wouldn't. You said it would be embarrassing. You're hard to please, Staniford."

"I shouldn't choose to have her speak for my pleasure," Staniford returned. "But it argues a dullness and coldness in her—"

"I don't believe she's dull; I don't believe she's cold," said Dunham, warmly.

"What do you believe she is?"

"Afraid."

"Pshaw!" said Staniford.

The eve of their arrival at Messina, he discharged one more duty by telling Hicks that he had better come on to Trieste with them. "Captain Jenness asked me to speak to you about it," he said. "He feels a little awkward, and thought I could open the matter better."

"The captain's all right," answered Hicks, with unruffled humility, "but I'd rather stop at Messina. I'm going to get home as soon as I can,—strike a bee-line."

"Look here!" said Staniford, laying his hand on his shoulder. "How are you going to manage for money?"

"Monte di Pieta," replied Hicks. "I've been there before. Used to have most of my things in the care of the state when I was studying medicine in Paris. I've got a lot of rings and trinkets that'll carry me through, with what's left of my watch."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure."

"Because you can draw on me, if you're going to be short."

"Thanks," said Hicks. "There's something I should like to ask you," he added, after a moment. "I see as well as you do that Miss Blood isn't the same as she was before. I want to know—I can't always be sure afterwards—whether I did or said anything out of the way in her presence."

"You were drunk," said Staniford, frankly, "but beyond that you were irreproachable, as regarded Miss Blood. You were even exemplary."

"Yes, I know," said Hicks, with a joyless laugh. "Sometimes it takes that turn. I don't think I could stand it if I had shown her any disrespect. She's a lady,—a perfect lady; she's the best girl I ever saw."

"Hicks," said Staniford, presently, "I haven't bored you in regard to that little foible of yours. Aren't you going to try to do something about it?"

"I'm going home to get them to shut me up somewhere," answered Hicks. "But I doubt if anything can be done. I've studied the thing; I am a doctor,—or I would be if I were not a drunkard,—and I've diagnosed the case pretty thoroughly. For three months or four months, now, I shall be all right. After that I shall go to the bad for a few weeks; and I'll have to scramble back the best way I can. Nobody can help me. That was the mistake this last time. I shouldn't have wanted anything at Gibraltar if I could have had my spree out at Boston. But I let them take me before it was over, and ship me off. I thought I'd try it. Well, it was like a burning fire every minute, all the way. I thought I should die. I tried to get something from the sailors; I tried to steal Gabriel's cooking-wine. When I got that brandy in Gibraltar I was wild. Talk about heroism! I tell you it was superhuman, keeping that canteen corked till night! I was in hopes I could get through it,—sleep it off,—and nobody be any the wiser. But it wouldn't work. O Lord, Lord, Lord!"

Hicks was as common a soul as could well be. His conception of life was vulgar, and his experience of it was probably vulgar. He had a good mind enough, with abundance of that humorous brightness which may hereafter be found the most national quality of the Americans; but his ideals were pitiful, and the language of his heart was a drolling slang. Yet his doom lifted him above his low conditions, and made him tragic; his despair gave him the dignity of a mysterious expiation, and set him apart with all those who suffer beyond human help. Without deceiving himself as to the quality of the man, Staniford felt awed by the darkness of his fate.

"Can't you try somehow to stand up against it, and fight it off? You're so young yet, it can't—"

The wretched creature burst into tears. "Oh, try,—try! You don't know what you're talking about. Don't you suppose I've had reasons for trying? If you could see how my mother looks when I come out of one of my drunks,—and my father, poor old man! It's no use; I tell you it's no use. I shall go just so long, and then I shall want it, and will have it, unless they shut me up for life. My God, I wish I was dead! Well!" He rose from the place where they had been sitting together, and held out his hand to Staniford. "I'm going to be off in the morning before you're out, and I'll say good-by now. I want you to keep this chair, and give it to Miss Blood, for me, when you get to Trieste."

"I will, Hicks," said Staniford, gently.

"I want her to know that I was ashamed of myself. I think she'll like to know it."

"I will say anything to her that you wish," replied Staniford.

"There's nothing else. If ever you see a man with my complaint fall overboard again, think twice before you jump after him."

He wrung Staniford's hand, and went below, leaving him with a dull remorse that he should ever have hated Hicks, and that he could not quite like him even now.

But he did his duty by him to the last. He rose at dawn, and was on deck when Hicks went over the side into the boat which was to row him to the steamer for Naples, lying at anchor not far off. He presently returned, to Staniford's surprise, and scrambled up to the deck of the Aroostook. "The steamer sails to-night," he said, "and perhaps I couldn't raise the money by that time. I wish you'd lend me ten napoleons. I'll send 'em to you from London. There's my father's address: I'm going to telegraph to him." He handed Staniford a card, and the latter went below for the coins. "Thanks," said Hicks, when he reappeared with them. "Send 'em to you where?"

"Care Blumenthals', Venice. I'm going to be there some weeks."

In the gray morning light the lurid color of tragedy had faded out of Hicks. He was merely a baddish-looking young fellow whom Staniford had lent ten napoleons that he might not see again. Staniford watched the steamer uneasily, both from the Aroostook and from the shore, where he strolled languidly about with Dunham part of the day. When she sailed in the evening, he felt that Hicks's absence was worth twice the money.



XVIII.

The young men did not come back to the ship at night, but went to a hotel, for the greater convenience of seeing the city. They had talked of offering to show Lydia about, but their talk had not ended in anything. Vexed with himself to be vexed at such a thing, Staniford at the bottom of his heart still had a soreness which the constant sight of her irritated. It was in vain that he said there was no occasion, perhaps no opportunity, for her to speak, yet he was hurt that she seemed to have seen nothing uncommon in his risking his own life for that of a man like Hicks. He had set the action low enough in his own speech; but he knew that it was not ignoble, and it puzzled him that it should be so passed over. She had not even said a word of congratulation upon his own escape. It might be that she did not know how, or did not think it was her place to speak. She was curiously estranged. He felt as if he had been away, and she had grown from a young girl into womanhood during his absence. This fantastic conceit was strongest when he met her with Captain Jenness one day. He had found friends at the hotel, as one always does in Italy, if one's world is at all wide,—some young ladies, and a lady, now married, with whom he had once violently flirted. She was willing that he should envy her husband; that amused him in his embittered mood; he let her drive him about; and they met Lydia and the captain, walking together. Staniford started up from his lounging ease, as if her limpid gaze had searched his conscience, and bowed with an air which did not escape his companion.