Читать книгу Wings of the Wind - Credo Fitch Harris - Страница 10

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A pleasant sense of motion came over me that suggested cradling waves, and I was sleepily wondering why we had gone out on a day that portended storms, when a tapping at my stateroom door was followed by someone whispering:

"Aren't you ever going to get up, you lazy old dear?"

It was a girl's voice.

Gradually and cautiously I drew the sheet about my chin, feeling no little confused to have a girl five feet away whispering pet names at me through a thin partition.

"Aren't you?" she repeated, more sweetly imperious.

"You bet," I stammered.

"Then do hurry! It's almost ten, and I've been waiting such a long time!"

Whereupon I heard her moving off, pressing her hands against the panels for steadiness, and there struck me as having been an endearing pathos in the way she said: "such a long time!"

This was, no doubt, some of Tommy's doing. He had invited friends aboard for luncheon, and was now daring one of them to play this joke. But my glance turned to the room, to its equipment and toilette articles which were large and curiously shaped, and the numbing truth crept into my brain that the stupid boatman had put me on the wrong yacht.

I had known some tight places in France, but this one simply squeezed me all over. There was nothing for it, of course, but go out and explain—yet how could a chap appear at noon draped in a sheet! The situation confused me, but I decided to search the wardrobe, of my unknown host, to borrow his razor, appropriate a new toothbrush that should be found in a box somewhere, and select flannels and linens in keeping with the hour. Still balanced between confusion and panic I must have done these things because, fittingly attired though with no very good fit, I opened my door, stepped softly along the passageway, and entered the cabin.

On a wide couch built in at one side a girl lay reading. Her head was toward me, but as I advanced she arose with a low cry of gladness, saying:

"So you're here at last——!" then with a little gasp drew back, facing me in the most entrancing attitude of bewilderment.

It was the girl who had left that ball of paper!

The sea, always my friend, at this moment did a rather decent thing; it gave the yacht a firm but gentle lurch and sent us into each other's arms. Perhaps nothing else in all the world of chances could so effectively have broken the ice between us, for we were laughing as I helped her back to the couch; and, as our eyes met, again we laughed.

"I didn't know," she said, "that Father brought a guest aboard last night!"

"Awkward of him, wasn't it?" I stammered, sparring for time.

"One is apt to be awkward in weather like this," she graciously admitted.

"You don't know how profoundly aware I am of—of how terribly true that is," I stumbled along. "Is he on deck?" For, oh, if I could only get to see him five minutes alone!

"No, he's unusually lazy this morning; but I've called, him, the old dear!"

A chill crept up my spine—crept up, crept down, and then criss-crossed. But she must know of her mistake before we had gone so far that putting me ashore would be a serious inconvenience—for I knew he would put me ashore at the nearest point, if not, indeed, set me adrift in an open boat. Therefore I suggested:

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to call him again? It's rather important!"

"Oh, you think we shouldn't have gone out in a storm like this? I've been dreadfully uneasy!"

"No danger at all," I declared, with affected indifference, adding: "The weather isn't half as rough as 'the old dear' will be, take my word for it!"

A shadow of mystification passed over her wonderful face, yet she smiled with well-bred tolerance, saying:

"You are quite droll."

"Drollery is the brother of good fellowship," I replied, helping her across the reeling cabin. As I had feared, she went directly to my room where the door had swung back showing an empty bunk.

"Why, he's up, after all," she glanced over her shoulder at me.

"I believe he is," I idiotically affirmed.

"But where?"—this more to herself.

"Hiding, maybe," I ventured, taking a facetious squint about.

"Hiding?" she asked, in mild surprise.

"Er—playing a trick on us! He's a funny old dog at tricks!"

"Funny old dog?" She drew slightly away from me. "Do you mean my father, Mr.—er?"

"Jack," I prompted, more than ever embarrassed and wishing the ocean would come up and swallow me; for I realized, alas, that my gods, by whom I was reasonably well remembered in so far as concerned physique, had been shamelessly remiss in their bestowal of brains.

"Jack?" she slowly repeated. "What an odd name!"

This made me feel queer.

"Where do you live," I asked, "that you think it's an odd name? The States are crawling with Jacks! It's even the Democratic emblem!"

Her perplexity was fast approaching alarm when we heard a muffled report above, followed by a trembling of the yacht. Someone called an order that sounded far away in the wind.

"Hold tight," I said, "while I see if anything's wrong!"

But I did not leave her side, knowing exactly what had happened. We had snapped our mainsheet, that was all; letting the boom swing out and putting us in the trough of the waves where we might expect a few wobbly minutes until the sailors could work in a new line. There was no danger and I reassured her at once, but she merely asked:

"Was my father on deck?"

"I didn't look," I answered, wondering why she thought I knew.

"Won't you see?" Her patience was becoming exhausted.

"I'm crazy to. But first let me help you back—you can't make it alone!"

"Oh, yes, I can," she murmured. "I always make things alone!"

I tried to fathom the meaning of this, but gave it up and started to go on deck. If I could take her father off to one side and explain, well and good. He would perhaps sympathize with my mistake when he understood that it was partially the result of a desire to fill Monsieur with spirits. Considering this, I spoiled everything by asking:

"What does he look like?"

"My father?" she gasped, in a wondering way.

"No—yes—certainly not! I mean—oh, this is intolerable! I don't know your father, never saw him in my life—unless he was the one with you last night when you drove me frantic with that ball of paper trick! But what you did has nothing to do with my being here. I've not wilfully followed. A stupid boatman mistook your yacht for my own when I was—I mean to say, when I was too engrossed with the memory of you to notice his mistake."

From alarm her look gave way to wonderment, then almost to mirth. It was a hard place for a girl to be in, and I expected her to leave me now, find the old chap and promptly have me hanged to a yard-arm. The fact that there are no yard-arms on schooner yachts made no difference. And I do believe she was considering that when a sailor passed us, looking enough like Tommy to have been his twin brother.

"Jack," she said to him, "tell Mr. Graham to come below!"

The fellow saluted and left, and I stared at her in surprise, saying:

"Then my name can't seem very odd to you, Miss Graham!"

She was regarding me as though trying to discover what kind of a species I was that had got on her father's yacht, when the sailor came back followed by a husky brute in uniform. Intuitively I stiffened to meet the crisis, but even at this eleventh hour a respite came.

"He ain't aboard," the other Jack whispered, and the captain—for the burly one was only the captain, after all—saluted, saying:

"I've just now found out, ma'am, he ain't aboard!"

"Not aboard? What do you mean?"

"After bringing you on last night he went ashore again to get a little ball of paper, but told me to sail the minute he returned. I don't understand it, ma'am, for later the watch woke me to say Mr. Graham had come."

"Good Lord," I groaned. "It was I, and not your father, who answered the watch."

For several minutes we stared blankly into each other's faces, but it was she who broke the deadly silence.

"We must hurry back," she calmly told him, adding with a nervous catch in her breath: "What a joke on Daddy!"

"A scream of a joke," I muttered, "——one he'll roar over till God-knows-when!"

"We can't go back, Miss Sylvia," the captain now said. "When our mainsheet parted the boom gybed so hard that it opened a seam. It may hold on this tack, and it may not, but we'd sink if the weather hit us on the other side. So I'm making for Key West."

A suspicious quiver played over her lips as the big fellow turned and went upstairs, and I began to hate myself rather cordially.

"Do you happen to have that—that ball of paper?" she asked, when the threatened storm of tears had been controlled.

"No, I threw it down."

A look of terror came into her eyes as she gasped:

"Then he'll find it!"

"It won't matter if he does! You hadn't written anything on it!"

"Did you look on both sides of it?"

"I—I think so; of course, I must have. Did you write on the other side?"

"I don't know which the other side is that you refer to," she answered with some show of anger. "There were two sides, you know. Still, it can't much matter now whether it had any sides or not."

This was very perplexing, the words no more so than the way she looked at me while pronouncing them. Yet I hardly thought it should give her as much concern as our leaky boat. The storm had grown worse, and more than once she glanced anxiously at the portholes whose glass, over half the time, were submerged by swirls of greenish water.

"It'll turn out all right," I said, gently. "And you mustn't be afraid of this storm."

"I'm not afraid!"

"Yes, you are," I tenderly persisted, "but your skipper looks like a man who'll bring us through."

"Your concern is most flattering," she frigidly replied. "But fear of storms, and distress over the unhappiness one may be causing others, are quite different phases of emotion."

"I stand corrected and rebuked," I humbly acknowledged. "Yet I want you to know that my concern springs from a deeper source than flattery. I want honestly to assure you——"

"Of course, there's less danger here than in port," she continued in the same icy tone, utterly ignoring me, "for here, at least, we can't be boarded at night by irresponsible people."

I winced.

"By people who drink," she added.

I winced again, for I seemed to be getting the winces now, and couldn't stop.

"That isn't fair, Miss Graham! Circumstances are against me, but you might suspend judgment till you know me better!"

"The circumstances require no further evidence," she said, with supreme indifference.

"But circumstantial evidence," I felt pleased at turning her phrase, "often wears the cap and bells, instead of the wig and gown!"

"I'm discovering that," she murmured, and added with a touch of sarcasm: "The knack of making a catch phrase is often very agreeable, but presupposes no presence of an idea."

Now I thought this most unkind of her, because I had been quite set up by my retort; so, arising with as much dignity as the waves would permit, I buttoned my coat, remarking:

"Then I'll go on deck, and leave you."

The coat was tight and, while fastening it, I felt something in an inner pocket press against my side. There are few impulses more natural than to investigate anything that has a curious feel in one's pocket, so thrusting in my hand I brought forth a small round frame of brass, made in the imitation of a porthole, encircling her photograph. This would not have happened had I remembered being in her father's clothes, but it was done, and I stood looking first at the picture and then at her.

"Give it to me," she cried.

"I don't see why," I temporized, not at all loath at having this chance for revenge.

"It's mine," she imperiously announced.

"It may be a picture of you, but, as you perceive, not at this moment your picture," and my eyes lowered again and lingered on it, for it was indeed a wonderful likeness, moving me strangely by its amazing beauty. The frame, too, gave it added charm, as she seemed really to be looking out of a porthole.

"Give that to me this instant," she said, with such a show of passion that I passively surrendered it, and started to walk away. Yet some cruel power held my feet. I tried again to move, but could not.

Overhead the men were working desperately at the pumps to keep us afloat. One of them left his place and passed us, whispering:

"It's no use—we're gone!"

The cabin was in twilight as I again turned to her. She had crawled to the far corner of the couch, and lay staring at the ceiling—waiting. Here in this dismal room, alone and facing death with a courage amazing to behold, she made a picture which so stirred me that despite earlier wounded feelings I went to her side. The little hands were cold and inert when I took them, but her fingers tightened ever so gently.

"Did he say we're going down?" she quietly asked, without turning her head.

"Yes," I answered—though both of us spoke in whispers.

"I'm sorry to have been unkind," she said, withdrawing one of her hands and laying it on the back of my own—for Death is a great leveler of conventions.

The pathetic resignation in her voice brought hot tears to my eyes and, raising her fingers to my lips, I murmured:

"You're the sweetest angel I ever knew!"

For a long time we sat in the gathering darkness, holding to each other as two little children lost in the night. Finally I heard her whisper:

"Why am I not afraid—now?"

I turned and looked down at her; down into those eyes gazing back at me through a magnetizing moisture that drew my face nearer, nearer.

"Because," I said, "we've found something which outlives death!"

"Yes," she whispered, as her arms moved sweetly up around my neck—but the next instant they held me off, as she gasped: "Look! Look! The end is here!"

Quite a foot of water was swashing back and forth over the cabin floor, while a steady stream poured down the companionway stairs. Yes, the end was here!

"Take this," she hurriedly pressed into my hand the round brass frame that held her picture—the frame fashioned after a porthole. "Keep it—then come to me! Swear!"

"I swear," I gasped. "But where shall I find you? In what strange land will you be?"

Her eyes were wide with a frightened look that even in our extremity gave the lie to fear. Through parted, expectant lips a trembling sigh of inexpressible sweetness seemed to carry her answer; it was brought by the mystery of her look, by the clasp of our senses—for I know she did not speak a word:

"I'll wait beneath the palms on one of many, many islands,

Set as emerald jewels in an ever-changing sea;

My hammock swings beside a pool of purling, crystal water

Whisp'ring to the shadows of a lonely Arcady;

The Spanish moss hangs solemn in long streamers from the cypress,

The paths are soft and noiseless with dead needles of the pine,

The nights are still and fragrant, and I'll wait——

Ah!" she broke the measure with a despairing cry and struggled to get from my arms, as another voice, far away but familiar, began to call my name. Then slowly my eyes opened and beheld Bilkins looking down at me, in my own stateroom, where my clothes were lying as I had thrown them off the night before.

"I've called you twice, sir," he was saying. "It's almost ten o'clock, and I'm afraid your bath is cold."

"I want it cold," I murmured, staring up at him. "God, Bilkins, I've had a most extraordinary dream!"

"If it's bad don't tell it before breakfast, sir, whatever you do! Just hold on a minute, and I'll bring your tray right in!"