# In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories/In a Steamer Chair

IN A STEAMER CHAIR
THE FIRST DAY.
Mr. George Morris stood with his arms folded on the bulwarks of the steamship City of Buffalo, and gazed down into the water. All around him was the bustle and hurry of passengers embarking, with friends bidding good-by. Among the throng, here and there, the hardworking men of the steamer were getting things in order for the coming voyage. Trunks were piled up in great heaps ready to be lowered into the hold; portmanteaus, satchels, and handbags, with tags tied to them, were placed in a row waiting to be claimed by the passengers, or taken down into the staterooms. To all this bustle and confusion George Morris paid no heed. He was thinking deeply, and his thoughts did not seem to be very pleasant. There was nobody to see him off, and he had evidently very little interest in either those who were going or those who were staying behind. ​Other passengers who had no friends to bid them farewell appeared to take a lively interest in watching the hurry and scurry, and in picking out the voyagers from those who came merely to say good-by.
At last the rapid ringing of a bell warned all lingerers that the time for the final parting had come. There were final handshakings, many embraces, and not a few tears, while men in uniform with stentorian voices cried, "All ashore." The second clanging of the bell, and the preparations for pulling up the gang planks, hurried the laggards to the pier. After the third ringing the gang plank was hauled away, the inevitable last man sprang to the wharf, the equally inevitable last passenger, who had just dashed up in a cab, flung his valises to the steward, was helped on board the ship, and then began the low, pulsating stroke, like the beating of a heart, that would not cease until the vessel had sighted land on the other side. George Morris's eyes were fixed on the water, yet apparently he was not looking at it, for when it began to spin away from the sides of the ship he took no notice, but still gazed at the mass of seething foam that the steamer threw off from her as she moved through the bay. It was evident that the sights of New York harbor were very familiar to the young ​man, for he paid no attention to them, and the vessel was beyond Sandy Hook before he changed his position. It is doubtful if he would have changed it then, had not a steward touched him on the elbow, and said:
"Any letters, sir?"
"Any what?" cried Morris, suddenly waking up from his reverie.
"Any letters, sir, to go ashore with the pilot?"
"Oh, letters. No, no, I haven't any. You have a regular post-office on board, have you? Mail leaves every day?"
"No, sir," replied the steward with a smile, "not every day, sir. We send letters ashore for passengers when the pilot leaves the ship. The next mail, sir, will leave at Queenstown."
The steward seemed uncertain as to whether the passenger was trying to joke with him or was really ignorant of the ways of steamships. However, his tone was very deferential and explanatory, not knowing but that this particular passenger might come to his lot at the table, and stewards take very good care to offend nobody. Future fees must not be jeopardized.
Being aroused, Mr. Morris now took a look around him. It seemed wonderful how soon order had been restored from the chaos of the starting. ​The trunks had disappeared down the hold; the portmanteaus were nowhere to be seen. Most of the passengers apparently were in their staterooms exploring their new quarters, getting out their wraps, Tam-o'-Shanters, fore-and-aft caps, steamer chairs, rugs, and copies of paper-covered novels. The deck was almost deserted, yet here and there a steamer chair had already been placed, and one or two were occupied. The voyage had commenced. The engine had settled down to its regular low thud, thud; the vessel's head rose gracefully with the long swell of the ocean, and, to make every thing complete, several passengers already felt that inward qualm—the accompaniment of so many ocean voyages.
George Morris yawned, and seemed the very picture of ennui. He put his hands deeply into his coat pockets, and sauntered across the deck. Then he took a stroll up the one side and down the other. As he lounged along it was very evident that he was tired of the voyage, even before it began. Judging from his listless manner nothing on earth could arouse the interest of the young man. The gong sounded faintly in the inner depth of the ship somewhere, announcing dinner. Then, as the steward appeared up the companion way, the sonorous whang, whang, became louder, and the ​hatless official, with the gong in hand, beat that instrument several final strokes, after which he disappeared into the regions below.
"I may as well go down," said Morris to himself, "and see where they have placed me at table. But I haven't much interest in dinner."
As he walked to the companion way an elderly gentleman and a young lady appeared at the opposite door, ready to descend the stairs. Neither of them saw the young man. But if they had, one of them at least would have doubted the young man's sanity. He stared at the couple for a moment with a look of grotesque horror on his face that was absolutely comical. Then he turned, and ran the length of the deck, with a speed unconscious of all obstacles.
"Say," he cried to the captain, "I want to go ashore. I must go ashore. I want to go ashore with the pilot."
The captain smiled, and said, "I shall be very happy to put you ashore, sir, but it will have to be at Queenstown. The pilot has gone."
"Why, it was only a moment ago that the steward asked me if I had any letters to post. Surely he cannot have gone yet?"
"It is longer than that, I am afraid," said the captain. "The pilot left the ship half an hour ago."
​"Is there no way I can get ashore? I don't mind what I pay for it."
"Unless we break a shaft and have to turn back there is no way that I know of. I am afraid you will have to make the best of it until we reach Queenstown."
"Can't you signal a boat and let me get off on her?"
"Well, I suppose we could. It is a very unusual thing to do. But that would delay us for some time, and unless the business is of the utmost necessity, I would not feel justified in delaying a steamer, or in other words delaying several hundred passengers, for the convenience of one. If you tell me what the trouble is I shall tell you at once whether I can promise to signal a boat if I get the opportunity of doing so."
Morris thought for a moment. It would sound very absurd to the captain for him to say that there was a passenger on the ship whom he desired very much not to meet, and yet, after all, that was what made the thought of the voyage so distasteful to him.
He merely said, "Thank you," and turned away, muttering to himself something in condemnation of his luck in general. As he walked slowly down the deck up which he had rushed with such headlong ​speed a few moments before, he noticed a lady trying to set together her steamer chair, which had seemingly given way—a habit of steamer chairs.
She looked up appealingly at Mr. Morris, but that gentleman was too preoccupied with his own situation to be gallant. As he passed her, the lady said:
"Would you be kind enough to see if you can put my steamer chair together?"
Mr. Morris looked astonished at this very simple request. He had resolved to make this particular voyage without becoming acquainted with any body, more especially a lady.
"Madam," he said, "I shall be pleased to call to your assistance the deck steward, if you wish."
"If I had wished that," replied the lady, with some asperity, "I would have asked you to do so. As it is, I asked you to fix it yourself."
"I do not understand you," said Mr. Morris, with some haughtiness. "I do not see that it matters who mends the steamer chair so long as the steamer chair is mended. I am not a deck steward." Then, thinking he had spoken rather harshly, he added, "I am not a deck steward, and don't understand the construction of steamer chairs as well as they do, you see."
​The lady rose. There was a certain amount of indignation in her voice as she said:
"Then pray allow me to present you with this steamer chair."
"I—I—really, madam, I do not understand you," stammered the young man, astonished at the turn the unsought conversation had taken.
"I think," replied the lady, "that what I said was plain enough. I beg you to accept this steamer chair as your own. It is of no further use to me."
Saying this, the young woman, with some dignity, turned her back upon him, and disappeared down the companion way, leaving Morris in a state of utter bewilderment as he looked down at the broken steamer chair, wondering if the lady was insane. All at once he noticed a rent in his trousers, between the knee and the instep.
"Good Heavens! how have I done this? My best pair of trousers, too. Gracious!" he cried, as a bewildered look stole over his face, "it isn't possible that in racing up this deck I ran against this steamer chair and knocked it to flinders, and possibly upset the lady at the same time? By George! that's just what the trouble is."
Looking at the back of the flimsy chair he noticed a tag tied to it, and on the tag he saw the ​name, "Miss Katherine Earle, New York." Passing to the other side he called the deck steward.
"Steward," he said, "there is a chair somewhere among your pile with the name 'Geo. Morris' on it. Will you get it for me?"
"Certainly, sir," answered the steward, and very shortly the other steamer chair, which, by the way, was a much more elegant, expensive, and stable affair than the one that belonged to Miss Katherine Earle, was brought to him. Then he untied the tag from his own chair and tied it to the flimsy structure that had just been offered to him; next he untied the tag from the lady's chair and put it on his own.
"Now, steward," he said, "do you know the lady who sat in this chair?"
"No, sir," said the steward, "I do not. You see, we are only a few hours out, sir."
"Very well, you will have no trouble finding her. When she comes on deck again, please tell her that this chair is hers, with the apologies of the gentleman who broke her own, and see if you can mend this other chair for me."
"Oh, yes," said the steward, "there will be no trouble about that. They are rather rickety things at best, sir."
​"Very well, if you do this for me nicely you will not be a financial sufferer."
"Thank you, sir. The dinner gong rang some time ago, sir."
"Yes, I heard it," answered Morris.
Placing his hands behind him he walked up and down the deck, keeping an anxious eye now and then on the companion way. Finally, the young lady whom he had seen going down with the elderly gentleman appeared alone on deck. Then Morris acted very strangely. With the stealthy demeanor of an Indian avoiding his deadly enemy, he slunk behind the different structures on the deck until he reached the other door of the companion way, and then, with a sigh of relief, ran down the steps. There were still quite a number of people in the saloon, and seated at the side of one of the smaller tables he noticed the lady whose name he imagined was Miss Katherine Earle.
"My name is Morris," said that gentleman to the head steward. "Where have you placed me?"
The steward took him down the long table, looking at the cards beside the row of plates.
"Here you are, sir," said the steward. "We are rather crowded this voyage, sir."
Morris did not answer him, for opposite he noticed the old gentleman who had been the ​companion of the young lady, lingering over his wine.
"Isn't there any other place vacant? At one of the smaller tables, for instance? I don't like to sit at the long table," said Morris, placing his finger and thumb significantly in his waistcoat pocket.
"I think that can be arranged, sir," answered the steward, with a smile.
"Is there a place vacant at the table where that young lady is sitting alone?" said Morris, nodding in the direction.
"Well, sir, all the places are taken there; but the gentleman who has been placed at the head of the table has not come down, sir, and if you like I will change his card for yours at the long table."
"I wish you would."
So with that he took his place at the head of the small table, and had the indignant young lady at his right hand.
"There ought to be a master of ceremonies," began Morris, with some hesitation, "to introduce people to each other on board a steamship. As it is, however, people have to get acquainted as best they may. My name is Morris, and, unless I am mistaken, you are Miss Katherine Earle. Am I right?"
"You are right about my name," answered the ​young lady. "I presume you ought to be about your own."
"Oh, I can prove that," said Morris, with a smile. "I have letters to show, and cards, and things like that."
Then he seemed to catch his breath as he remembered there was also a young woman on board who could vouch that his name was George Morris. This took him aback for a moment, and he was silent. Miss Earle made no reply to his offer of identification.
"Miss Earle," he said hesitatingly at last, "I wish you would permit me to apologize to you if I am as culpable as I imagine. Did I run against your chair and break it?"
"Do you mean to say," replied the young lady, looking at him steadily, "that you do not know whether you did or not?"
"Well, it's a pretty hard thing to ask a person to believe, and yet I assure you that is the fact. I have only the dimmest remembrance of the disaster, as of something I might have done in a dream. To tell you the truth, I did not even suspect I had done so until I noticed I had torn a portion of my clothing by the collision. After you left, it just dawned upon me that I was the one who smashed the chair. I therefore desire to apologize very ​humbly, and hope you will permit me to do so."
"For what do you intend to apologize, Mr. Morris? For breaking the chair, or refusing to mend it when I asked you?"
"For both. I was really in a good deal of trouble just the moment before I ran against your chair, Miss Earle, and I hope you will excuse me on the ground of temporary insanity. Why, you know, they even let off murderers on that plea, so I hope to be forgiven for being careless in the first place, and boorish in the second."
"You are freely forgiven, Mr. Morris. In fact, now that I think more calmly about the incident, it was really a very trivial affair to get angry over, and I must confess I was angry."
"You were perfectly justified."
"In getting angry, perhaps; but in showing my anger, no—as someone says in a play. Meanwhile, we'll forget all about it," and with that the young lady rose, bidding her new acquaintance good-night.
George Morris found he had more appetite for dinner than he expected to have.
SECOND DAY.
Mr. George Morris did not sleep well his first night on the City of Buffalo. He dreamt that he was being chased around the deck by a couple of young ladies, one a very pronounced blonde, and the other an equally pronounced brunette, and he suffered a great deal because of the uncertainty as to which of the two pursuers he desired the most to avoid. It seemed to him that at last he was cornered, and the fiendish young ladies began literally, as the slang phrase is, to mop the deck with him. He felt himself being slowly pushed back and forward across the deck, and he wondered how long he would last if this treatment were kept up. By and by he found himself lying still in his bunk, and the swish, swish above him of the men scrubbing the deck in the early morning showed him his dream had merged into reality. He remembered then that it was the custom of the smoking room steward to bring a large silver pot of fragrant coffee early every morning and place it on the table of the smoking room. Morris also recollected that on former voyages that early morning coffee had always tasted particularly good. It was grateful and comforting, as the advertisement has it. Shortly after, Mr. Morris was on the wet deck, ​which the men were still scrubbing with the slow, measured swish, swish of the brush he had heard earlier in the morning. No rain was falling, but everything had a rainy look. At first he could see only a short distance from the ship. The clouds appeared to have come down on the water, where they hung, lowering. There was no evidence that such a thing as a sun existed. The waves rolled out of this watery mist with an oily look, and the air was so damp and chilly that it made Morris shiver as he looked out on the dreary prospect. He thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, which seemed to be an indolent habit of his, and walked along the slippery deck to search for the smoking room. He was thinking of his curious and troublesome dream, when around the corner came the brunette, wrapped in a long cloak that covered her from head to foot. The cloak had a couple of side pockets set angleways in front, after the manner of the pockets in ulsters. In these pockets Miss Earle's hands were placed, and she walked the deck with a certain independent manner which Mr. Morris remembered that he disliked. She seemed to be about to pass him without recognition, when the young man took off his cap and said pleasantly, "Good-morning, Miss Earle. You are a very early riser."
​"The habit of years," answered that young lady, "is not broken by merely coming on board ship."
Mr. Morris changed step and walked beside her.
"The habit of years?" he said. "Why, you speak as if you were an old woman."
"I am an old woman," replied the girl, "in every thing but one particular."
"And that particular," said her companion, "is the very important one, I imagine, of years."
"I don't know why that is so very important."
"Oh, you will think so in after life, I assure you. I speak as a veteran myself."
The young lady gave him a quick side glance with her black eyes, from under the hood that almost concealed her face.
"You say you are a veteran," she answered, "but you don't think so. It would offend you very deeply to be called old."
"Oh, I don't know about that. I think such a remark is offensive only when there is truth in it. A young fellow slaps his companion on the shoulder and calls him 'old man.' The gray-haired veteran always addresses his elderly friend as 'my boy'."
"Under which category do you think you come, then?"
​"Well, I don't come under either exactly. I am sort of on the middle ground. I sometimes feel very old. In fact, to confess to you, I never felt older in my life than I did yesterday. To-day I am a great deal younger."
"Dear me," replied the young lady, "I am sorry to hear that."
"Sorry!" echoed her companion; "I don't see why you should be sorry. It is said that everyone rejoices in the misfortunes of others, but it is rather unusual to hear them admit it."
"It is because of my sympathy for others that I am sorry to hear you are younger to-day than you were yesterday. If you take to running along the deck to-day then the results will be disastrous, and I think you owe it to your fellow-passengers to send the steward with his gong ahead of you, so as to give people in steamer chairs warning."
"Miss Earle," said the young man, "I thought you had forgiven me for yesterday. I am sure I apologized very humbly, and am willing to apologize again to-day."
"Did I forgive you? I had forgotten!"
"But you remembered the fault. I am afraid that is misplaced forgetfulness. The truth is, I imagine, you are very unforgiving."
"My friends do not think so."
​"Then I suppose you rank me among your enemies?"
"You forget that I have known you for a day only."
"That is true, chronologically speaking. But you must remember a day on shipboard is very much longer than a day on shore. In fact, I look on you now as an old acquaintance, and I should be sorry to think you looked on me as an enemy."
"You are mistaken. I do not. I look on you now as you do on your own age sort of between the two."
"And which way do you think I shall drift? Toward the enemy line, or toward the line of friendship?"
"I am sure I cannot tell."
"Well, Miss Earle, I am going to use my best endeavors to reach the friendship line, which I shall make unless the current is too strong for me. I hope you are not so prejudiced against me that the pleasant effort will be fruitless."
"Oh, I am strictly neutral," said the young lady. "Besides, it really amounts to nothing. Steamer friendships are the most evanescent things on earth."
"Not on earth, surely, Miss Earle. You must mean on sea."
​"Well, the earth includes the sea, you know."
"Have you had experience with steamer friendships? I thought, somehow, this was your first voyage."
"What made you think so?"
"Well, I don't know. I thought it was, that's all."
"I hope there is nothing in my manner that would induce a stranger to think I am a verdant traveler."
"Oh, not at all. You know, a person somehow classifies a person's fellow-passengers. Some appear to have been crossing the ocean all their lives, whereas, in fact, they are probably on shipboard for the first time. Have you crossed the ocean before?"
"Yes."
"Now, tell me whether you think I ever crossed before?"
"Why, of course you have. I should say that you cross probably once a year. Maybe oftener."
"Really? For business or pleasure?"
"Oh, business, entirely. You did not look yesterday as if you ever had any pleasure in your life."
"Oh, yesterday! Don't let us talk about yesterday. It's to-day now, you know. You seem to be a mind reader. Perhaps you could tell my occupation?"
​"Certainly. Your occupation is doubtless that of a junior partner in a prosperous New York house. You go over to Europe every year—perhaps twice a year, to look after the interests of your business."
"You think I am a sort of commercial traveler, then?"
"Well, practically, yes. The older members of the firm, I should imagine, are too comfortably situated, and care too little for the pleasures of foreign travel, to devote much of their time to it. So what foreign travel there is to be done falls on the shoulders of the younger partner. Am I correct?"
"Well, I don't quite class myself as a commercial traveler, you know, but in the main you are in fact, you are remarkably near right. I think you must be something of a mind reader, as I said before, Miss Earle, or is it possible that I carry my business so plainly in my demeanor as all that?"
Miss Earle laughed. It was a very bright, pleasant, cheerful laugh.
"Still, I must correct you where you are wrong, for fear you become too conceited altogether about your powers of observation. I have not crossed the ocean as often as you seem to think. In the future I shall perhaps do so frequently. I am the junior partner, as you say, but have not been a partner long. In fact I am now on my first voyage ​in connection with the new partnership. Now, Miss Earle, let me try a guess at your occupation."
"You are quite at liberty to guess at it."
"But will you tell me if I guess correctly?"
"Yes. I have no desire to conceal it."
"Then, I should say off-hand that you are a teacher, and are now taking a vacation in Europe. Am I right?"
"Tell me first why you think so?"
"I am afraid to tell you. I do not want to drift toward the line of enmity."
"You need have no fear. I have every respect for a man who tells the truth when he has to."
"Well, I think a school-teacher is very apt to get into a certain dictatorial habit of speech. School teachers are something like military men. They are accustomed to implicit obedience without question, and this, I think, affects their manner with other people."
"You think I am dictatorial, then?"
"Well, I shouldn't say that you were dictatorial exactly. But there is a certain confidence—I don't know just how to express it, but it seems to me, you know—well, I am going deeper and deeper into trouble by what I am saying, so really I shall not say any more. I do not know just how to express it."
​"I think you express it very nicely. Go on, please."
"Oh, you are laughing at me now."
"Not at all, I assure you. You were trying to say that I was very dictatorial."
"No, I was trying to say nothing of the kind. I was merely trying to say that you have a certain confidence in yourself, and a certain belief that everything you say is perfectly correct, and is not to be questioned. Now, do as you promised, and tell me how near right I am."
"You are entirely wrong. I never taught school."
"Well, Miss Earle, I confessed to my occupation without citing any mitigating circumstances. So now, would you think me impertinent if I asked you to be equally frank?"
"Oh, not at all! But I may say at once that I wouldn't answer you."
"But you will tell me if I guess."
"Yes, I promise that."
"Well, I am certainly right in saying that you are crossing the ocean for pleasure."
"No, you are entirely wrong. I am crossing for business."
"Then, perhaps you cross very often, too?"
"No; I crossed only once before, and that was coming the other way."
​"Really, this is very mysterious. When are you coming back?"
"I am not coming back."
"Oh, well," said Morris, "I give it up. I think I have scored the unusual triumph of managing to be wrong in everything that I have said. Have I not?"
"I think you have."
"And you refuse to put me right?"
"Certainly."
"I don't think you are quite fair, Miss Earle."
"I don't think I ever claimed to be, Mr. Morris. But I am tired of walking now. You see, I have been walking the deck for considerably longer than you have. I think I shall sit down for a while."
"Let me take you to your chair."
Miss Earle smiled. "It would be of very little use," she said.
The deck steward was not to be seen, and Morris, diving into a dark and cluttered-up apartment, in which the chairs were piled, speedily picked out his own, brought it to where the young lady was standing, spread it out in its proper position, and said:
"Now let me get you a rug or two."
"You have made a mistake. That is not my chair."
"Oh, yes, it is. I looked at the tag. That is your name, is it not?"
​"Yes, that is my name; but this is not my chair."
"Well, I beg that you will use it until the owner calls for it."
"But who is the owner? Is this your chair?"
"It was mine until after I smashed up yours."
"Oh, but I cannot accept your chair, Mr. Morris."
"You surely wouldn't refuse to do what you desired, in fact, commanded, another to do. You know you practically ordered me to take your chair. Well, I have accepted it. It is going to be put right to-day. So, you see, you cannot refuse mine."
Miss Earle looked at him for a moment.
"This is hardly what I would call a fair exchange," she said. "My chair was really a very cheap and flimsy one. This chair is much more expensive. You see, I know the price of them. I think you are trying to arrange your revenge, Mr. Morris. I think you want to bring things about so that I shall have to apologize to you in relation to that chair-breaking incident. However, I see that this chair is very comfortable, so I will take it. Wait a moment till I get my rugs."
"No, no," cried Morris, "tell me where you left them. I will get them for you."
"Thank you. I left them on the seat at the head of the companion way. One is red, the other ​is more variegated; I cannot describe it, but they are the only two rugs there, I think."
A moment afterward the young man appeared with the rugs on his arm, and arranged them around the young lady after the manner of deck stewards and gallant young men who are in the habit of crossing the ocean.
"Would you like to have a cup of coffee?"
"I would, if it can be had."
"Well, I will let you into a shipboard secret. Every morning on this vessel the smoking-room steward brings up a pot of very delicious coffee, which he leaves on the table of the smoking room. He also brings a few biscuits—not the biscuit of American fame, but the biscuit of English manufacture, the cracker, as we call it—and those who frequent the smoking room are in the habit sometimes of rising early, and, after a walk on deck, pouring out a cup of coffee for themselves."
"But I do not expect to be a habitué of the smoking room," said Miss Earle.
"Nevertheless, you have a friend who will be, and so in that way, you see, you will enjoy the advantages of belonging to the smoking club."
A few moments afterward, Morris appeared with a camp stool under his arm, and two cups of coffee in his hands. Miss Earle noticed the smile ​suddenly fade from his face, and a look of annoyance, even of terror, succeed it. His hands trembled, so that the coffee spilled from the cup into the saucer.
"Excuse my awkwardness," he said huskily; then, handing her the cup, he added, "I shall have to go now. I will see you at breakfast-time. Good-morning." With the other cup still in his hand, he made his way to the stair.
Miss Earle looked around and saw, coming up the deck, a very handsome young lady with blond hair.
THIRD DAY.
On the morning of the third day, Mr. George Morris woke up after a sound and dreamless sleep. He woke up feeling very dissatisfied with himself, indeed. He said he was a fool, which was probably true enough, but even the calling himself so did not seem to make matters any better. He reviewed in his mind the events of the day before. He remembered his very pleasant walk and talk with Miss Earle. He knew the talk had been rather purposeless, being merely that sort of preliminary conversation which two people who do not yet know each other indulge in, as a forerunner to future friendship. Then, he thought of his awkward ​leave-taking of Miss Earle when he presented her with the cup of coffee, and for the first time he remembered with a pang that he had under his arm a camp stool. It must have been evident to Miss Earle that he had intended to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her, and continue the acquaintance begun so auspiciously that morning. He wondered if she had noticed that his precipitate retreat had taken place the moment there appeared on the deck a very handsome and stylishly dressed young lady. He began to fear that Miss Earle must have thought him suddenly taken with insanity, or, worse still, seasickness. The more Morris thought about the matter the more dissatisfied he was with himself and his actions. At breakfast—he had arrived very late, almost as Miss Earle was leaving—he felt he had preserved a glum, reticent demeanor, and that he had the general manner of a fugitive anxious to escape justice. He wondered what Miss Earle must have thought of him after his eager conversation of the morning. The rest of the day he had spent gloomily in the smoking room, and had not seen the young lady again. The more he thought of the day the worse he felt about it. However, he was philosopher enough to know that all the thinking he could do would not change a single item in the sum of the day's doing. So he ​slipped back the curtain on its brass rod and looked out into his stateroom. The valise which he had left carelessly on the floor the night before was now making an excursion backward and forward from the bunk to the sofa, and the books that had been piled up on the sofa were scattered all over the room. It was evident that dressing was going to be an acrobatic performance.
The deck, when he reached it, was wet, but not with the moisture of the scrubbing. The outlook was clear enough, but a strong head wind was blowing that whistled through the cordage of the vessel, and caused the black smoke of the funnels to float back like huge somber streamers. The prow of the big ship rose now into the sky and then sank down into the bosom of the sea, and every time it descended a white cloud of spray drenched every thing forward, and sent a drizzly salt rain along the whole length of the steamer.
"There will be no ladies on deck this morning," said Morris to himself, as he held his cap on with both hands and looked around at the threatening sky. At this moment one wave struck the steamer with more than usual force and raised its crest amidships over the decks. Morris had just time to escape into the companion way when it fell with a crash on the deck, flooding the promenade, and ​then rushing out through the scuppers into the sea.
"By George!" said Morris. "I guess there won't be many at breakfast either, if this sort of thing keeps up. I think the other side of the ship is the best."
Coming out on the other side of the deck, he was astonished to see, sitting in her steamer chair, snugly wrapped up in her rugs, Miss Katherine Earle, balancing a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. The steamer chair had been tightly tied to the brass stanchion, or hand rail, that ran along the side of the housed-in portion of the companion way, and although the steamer swayed to and fro, as well as up and down, the chair was immovable. An awning had been put up over the place where the chair was fastened, and every now and then on that dripping piece of canvas the salt rain fell, the result of the waves that dashed in on the other side of the steamer.
"Good-morning, Mr. Morris!" said the young lady brightly. "I am very glad you have come. I will let you into a shipboard secret. The steward of the smoking room brings up every morning a pot of very fragrant coffee. Now, if you will speak to him, I am sure he will be very glad to give you a cup."
​"You do like to make fun of me, don't you?" answered the young man.
"Oh, dear no," said Miss Earle, "I shouldn't think of making fun of anything so serious. Is it making fun of a person who looks half frozen to offer him a cup of warm coffee? I think there is more philanthropy than fun about that."
"Well, I don't know but you are right. At any rate, I prefer to take it as philanthropy rather than fun. I shall go and get a cup of coffee for myself, if you will permit me to place a chair beside yours?"
"Oh, I beg you not to go for the coffee yourself. You certainly will never reach here with it. You see the remains of that cup down by the side of the vessel. The steward himself slipped and fell, with that piece of crockery in his hands. I am sure he hurt himself, although he said he didn't."
"Did you give him an extra fee on that account?" asked Morris cynically.
"Of course I did. I am like the Government in that respect. I take care of those who are injured in my service."
"Perhaps that's why he went down. They are a sly set, those stewards. He knew that a man would simply laugh at him, or perhaps utter some maledictions if he were not feeling in very good ​humor. In all my ocean voyages, I have never had the good fortune to see a steward fall. He knew also, the racsal, that a lady would sympathize with him, and that he wouldn't lose anything by it, except the cup, which is not his loss."
"Oh, yes, it is," replied the young lady, "he tells me they charge all breakages against him."
"He didn't tell you what method they had of keeping track of the breakages, did he? Suppose he told the chief steward that you broke the cup, which it is likely he did. What then?"
"Oh, you are too cynical this morning, and it would serve you just right if you go and get some coffee for yourself, and meet with the same disaster that overtook the unfortunate steward. Only you are forewarned that you shall have neither sympathy nor fee."
"Well, in that case," said the young man, "I shall not take the risk. I shall sacrifice the steward rather. Oh, here he is. I say, steward, will you bring me a cup of coffee, please?"
"Yes, sir. Any biscuit, sir?"
"No, no biscuit. Just a cup of coffee and a couple of lumps of sugar, please; and if you can first get me a chair, and strap it to this rod in the manner you do so well, I shall be very much obliged."
​"Yes, sir. I shall call the deck steward, sir."
"Now, notice that. You see the rascals never interfere with each other. The deck steward wants a fee, and the smoking-room steward wants a fee, and each one attends strictly to his own business, and doesn't interfere with the possible fees of anybody else."
"Well," said Miss Earle, "is not that the correct way? If things are to be well done, that is how they should be done. Now, just notice how much more artistically the deck steward arranged these rugs than you did yesterday morning. I think it is worth a good fee to be wrapped up so comfortably as that."
"I guess I'll take lessons from the deck steward, then, and even if I do not get a fee, I may perhaps get some gratitude at least."
"Gratitude? Why, you should think it a privilege."
"Well, Miss Earle, to tell the truth, I do. It is a privilege that I hope you will not think I am trying to flatter you when I say any man might be proud of."
"Oh, dear," replied the young lady, laughing, "I did not mean it in that way at all. I meant that it was a privilege to be allowed to practice on those particular rugs. Now, a man should remember that ​he undertakes a very great responsibility when he volunteers to place the rugs around a lady on a steamer chair. He may make her look very neat and even pretty by a nice disposal of the rugs, or he may make her look like a horrible bundle."
"Well, then, I think I was not such a failure after all yesterday morning, for you certainly looked very neat and pretty."
"Then, if I did, Mr. Morris, do not flatter yourself it was at all on account of your disposal of the rugs, for the moment you had left a very handsome young lady came along, and, looking at me, said, with such a pleasant smile, 'Why, what a pretty rug you have there; but how the steward has bungled it about you! Let me fix it,' and with that she gave it a touch here and a smooth down there, and the result was really so nice that I hated to go down to breakfast. It is a pity you went away so quickly yesterday morning. You might have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the lady, who is, I think, the prettiest girl on board this ship."
"Do you?" said Mr. Morris shortly.
"Yes, I do. Have you noticed her? She sits over there at the long table near the center. You must have seen her; she is so very, very pretty, that you cannot help noticing her."
​"I am not looking after pretty women this voyage," said Morris savagely.
"Oh, are you not? Well, I must thank you for that. That is evidently a very sincere compliment. No, I can't call it a compliment, but a sincere remark. I think the first sincere one you have made to-day."
"Why, what do you mean?" said Morris, looking at her in a bewildered sort of way.
"You have been looking after me this morning, have you not, and yesterday morning? And taking ever so much pains to be helpful and entertaining, and now, all at once you say—— Well, you know what you said just now."
"Oh, yes. Well, you see——"
"Oh, you can't get out of it, Mr. Morris. It was said, and with evident sincerity."
"Then you really think you are pretty?" said Mr. Morris, looking at his companion, who flushed under the remark.
"Ah, now," she said, "you imagine you are carrying the war into the enemy's country. But I don't at all appreciate a remark like that. I don't know but I dislike it even more than I do your compliments, which is saying a good deal."
"I assure you," said Morris stiffly, "that I have ​not intended to pay any compliments. I am not a man who pays compliments."
"Not even left-handed ones?"
"Not even any kind, that I know of. I try as a general thing to speak the truth."
"Ah, and shame your hearers?"
"Well, I don't care who I shame as long as I succeed in speaking the truth."
"Very well, then; tell me the truth. Have you noticed this handsome young lady I speak of?"
"Yes, I have seen her."
"Don't you think she is very pretty?"
"Yes, I think she is."
"Don't you think she is the prettiest woman on the ship?"
"Yes, I think she is."
"Are you afraid of pretty women?"
"No, I don't think I am."
"Then, tell me why, the moment she appeared on the deck yesterday morning, you were so much agitated that you spilled most of my coffee in the saucer?"
"Did I appear agitated?" asked Morris, with some hesitation.
"Now, I consider that sort of thing worse than a direct prevarication."
​"What sort of thing?"
"Why, a disingenuous answer. You know you appeared agitated. You know you were agitated. You know you had a camp stool, and that you intended to sit down here and drink your coffee. All at once you changed your mind, and that change was coincident with the appearance on deck of the handsome young lady I speak of. I merely ask why?"
"Now, look here, Miss Earle, even the worst malefactor is not expected to incriminate himself. I can refuse to answer, can I not?"
"Certainly you may. You may refuse to answer anything, if you like. It was only because you were boasting about speaking the truth that I thought I should test your truth-telling qualities. I have been expecting every moment that you would say to me I was very impertinent, and that it was no business of mine, which would have been quite true. There, you see, you had a beautiful chance of speaking the truth which you let slip entirely unnoticed. But there is the breakfast gong. Now, I must confess to being very hungry indeed. I think I shall go down into the saloon."
"Please take my arm, Miss Earle," said the young man.
"Oh, not at all," replied that young lady; "I ​want something infinitely more stable. I shall work my way along this brass rod until I can make a bolt for the door. If you want to make yourself real useful, go and stand on the stairway, or the companion way I think you call it, and if I come through the door with too great force you'll prevent me from going down the stairs."
"'Who ran to help me when I fell,'" quoted Mr. Morris, as he walked along ahead of her, having some difficulty in maintaining his equilibrium.
"I wouldn't mind the falling," replied the young lady, "if you only would some pretty story tell; but you are very prosaic, Mr. Morris. Do you ever read anything at all?"
"I never read when I have somebody more interesting than a book to talk to."
"Oh, thank you. Now, if you will get into position on the stairway, I shall make my attempts at getting to the door."
"I feel like a baseball catcher," said Morris, taking up a position somewhat similar to that of the useful man behind the bat.
Miss Earle, however, waited until the ship was on an even keel, then walked to the top of the companion way, and, deftly catching up the train of her dress, with as much composure as if she were in a ballroom, stepped lightly down the stairway. ​Looking smilingly over her shoulder at the astonished baseball catcher, she said:
"I wish you would not stand in that ridiculous attitude, but come and accompany me to the breakfast table. As I told you, I am very hungry."
The steamer gave a lurch that nearly precipitated Morris down the stairway, and the next moment he was by her side.
"Are you fond of baseball?" she said to him.
"You should see me in the park when our side makes a home run. Do you like the game?"
"I never saw a game in my life."
"What! you an American girl, and never saw a game of baseball? Why, I am astonished."
"I did not say that I was an American girl."
"Oh, that's a fact. I took you for one, however."
They were both of them so intent on their conversation in walking up the narrow way between the long table and the short ones, that neither of them noticed the handsome blond young lady standing beside her chair looking at them. It was only when that young lady said, "Why, Mr. Morris, is this you?" and when that gentleman jumped as if a cannon had been fired beside him, that either of them noticed their fair fellow-traveler.
"Y—es," stammered Morris, "it is!"
​The young lady smiled sweetly and held out her hand, which Morris took in an awkward way.
"I was just going to ask you," she said, "when you came aboard. How ridiculous that would have been! Of course, you have been here all the time. Isn't it curious that we have not met each other? We of all persons in the world."
Morris, who had somewhat recovered his breath, looked steadily at her as she said this, and her eyes, after encountering his gaze for a moment, sank to the floor.
Miss Earle, who had waited for a moment expecting that Morris would introduce her, but seeing that he had, for the time being, apparently forgotten everything on earth, quietly left them, and took her place at the breakfast table. The blond young lady looked up again at Mr. Morris, and said:
"I am afraid I am keeping you from breakfast."
"Oh, that doesn't matter."
"I am afraid, then," she continued sweetly, "that I am keeping you from your very interesting table companion."
"Yes, that does matter," said Morris, looking at her. "I wish you good-morning, madam." And with that he left her and took his place at the head of the small table.
There was a vindictive look in the blond young ​lady's pretty eyes as she sank into her own seat at the breakfast table.
Miss Earle had noticed the depressing effect which even the sight of the blond lady exercised on Morris the day before, and she looked forward, therefore, to rather an uncompanionable breakfast. She was surprised, however, to see that Morris had an air of jaunty joviality, which she could not help thinking was rather forced.
"Now," he said, as he sat down on the sofa at the head of the table, "I think it's about time for us to begin our chutney fight."
"Our what?" asked the young lady, looking up at him with open eyes.
"Is it possible," he said, "that you have crossed the ocean and never engaged in the chutney fight? I always have it on this line."
"I am sorry to appear so ignorant," said Miss Earle, "but I have to confess I do not know what chutney is."
"I am glad of that," returned the young man. "It delights me to find in your nature certain desert spots—certain irreclaimable lands, I might say—of ignorance."
"I do not see why a person should rejoice in the misfortunes of another person," replied the young lady.
​"Oh, don't you? Why, it is the most natural thing in the world. There is nothing that we so thoroughly dislike as a person, either lady or gentleman, who is perfect. I suspect you rather have the advantage of me in the reading of books, but I certainly have the advantage of you on chutney, and I intend to make the most of it."
"I am sure I shall be very glad to be enlightened, and to confess my ignorance whenever it is necessary, and that, I fear, will be rather often. So if our acquaintance continues until the end of the voyage, you will be in a state of perpetual delight."
"Well, that's encouraging. You will be pleased to learn that chutney is a sauce, an Indian sauce, and on this line, somehow or other, they never have more than one or two bottles. I do not know whether it is very expensive. I presume it is. Perhaps it is because there is very little demand for it, a great number of people not knowing what chutney is."
"Thank you," said the young lady, "I am glad to find that I am in the majority, at least, even in the matter of ignorance."
"Well, as I was saying, chutney is rather a seductive sauce. You may not like it at first, but it grows on you. You acquire, as it were, the chutney habit. An old Indian traveler, whom I had the ​pleasure of crossing with once, and who sat at the same table with me, demanded chutney. He initiated me into the mysteries of chutney, and he had a chutney fight all the way across."
"I still have to confess that I do not see what there is to fight about in the matter of chutney."
"Don't you? Well, you shall soon have a practical illustration of the terrors of a chutney fight. Steward," called Morris, "just bring me a bottle of chutney, will you?"
"Chutney, sir?" asked the steward, as if he had never heard the word before.
"Yes, chutney. Chutney sauce."
"I am afraid, sir," said the steward, "that we haven't any chutney sauce."
"Oh, yes, you have. I see a bottle there on the captain's table. I think there is a second bottle at the smaller table. Just two doors up the street. Have the kindness to bring it to me."
The steward left for the chutney, and Morris looking after him, saw that there was some discussion between him and the steward of the other table. Finally, Morris's steward came back and said, "I am very sorry, sir, but they are using the chutney at that table."
"Now look here, steward," said Morris, "you know that you are here to take care of us, and that ​at the end of the voyage I will take care of you. Don't make any mistake about that. You understand me?"
"Yes, sir, I do," said the steward. "Thank you, sir."
"All right," replied Morris. "Now you understand that I want chutney, and chutney I am going to have."
Steward number one waited until steward number two had disappeared after another order, and then he deftly reached over, took the chutney sauce, and placed it before Mr. Morris.
"Now, Miss Earle, I hope that you will like this chutney sauce. You see there is some difficulty in getting it, and that of itself ought to be a strong recommendation for it."
"It is a little too hot to suit me," answered the young lady, trying the Indian sauce, "still, there is a pleasant flavor about it that I like."
"Oh, you are all right," said Morris jauntily; "you will be a victim of the chutney habit before two days. People who dislike it at first are its warmest advocates afterward. I use the word warmest without any allusion to the sauce itself, you know. I shall now try some myself."
As he looked round the table for the large bottle, he saw that it had been whisked away by steward ​number two, and now stood on the other table. Miss Earle laughed.
"Oh, I shall have it in a moment," said the young man.
"Do you think it is worth while?"
"Worth while? Why, that is the excitement of a chutney fight. It is not that we care for chutney at all, but that we simply are bound to have it. If there were a bottle of chutney at every table, the delights of chutney would be gone. Steward," said Morris, as that functionary appeared, "the chutney, please."
The steward cast a rapid glance at the other table, and waited until steward number two had disappeared. Then Morris had his chutney. Steward number two, seeing his precious bottle gone, tried a second time to stealthily obtain possession of it, but Morris said to him in a pleasant voice, "That's all right, steward, we are through with the chutney. Take it along, please. So that," continued Mr. Morris, as Miss Earle rose from the table, "that is your first experience of a chutney fight—one of the delights of ocean travel."
FOURTH DAY.
Mr. George Morris began to find his "early coffees," as he called them, very delightful. It was charming to meet a pretty and entertaining young lady every morning early when they had the deck practically to themselves.
The fourth day was bright and clear, and the sea was reasonably calm. For the first time he was up earlier than Miss Earle, and he paced the deck with great impatience, waiting for her appearance. He wondered who and what she was. He had a dim, hazy idea that some time before in his life he had met her, and probably had been acquainted with her. What an embarrassing thing it would be, he thought, if he had really known her years before, and had forgotten her, while she knew who he was, and had remembered him. He thought of how accurately she had guessed his position in life—if it was a guess. He remembered that often, when he looked at her, he felt certain he had known her and spoken to her before. He placed the two steamer chairs in position, so that Miss Earle's chair would be ready for her when she did appear, and then, as he walked up and down the deck waiting for her, he began to wonder at himself. If anyone had told him when he left New York that, within three or ​four days he could feel such an interest in a person who previous to that time had been an utter stranger to him, he would have laughed scornfully and bitterly at the idea. As it was, when he thought of all the peculiar circumstances of the case, he laughed aloud, but neither scornfully nor bitterly.
"You must be having very pleasant thoughts, Mr. Morris," said Miss Earle, as she appeared with a bright shawl thrown over her shoulders, instead of the long cloak that had incased her before, and with a Tam o' Shanter set jauntily on her black, curly hair.
"You are right," said Morris, taking off his cap, "I was thinking of you."
"Oh, indeed," replied the young lady, "that's why you laughed, was it? I may say that I do not relish being laughed at in my absence, or in my presence either, for that matter."
"Oh, I assure you I wasn't laughing at you. I laughed with pleasure to see you come on deck. I have been waiting for you."
"Now, Mr. Morris, that from a man who boasts of his truthfulness is a little too much. You did not see me at all until I spoke; and if, as you say, you were thinking of me, you will have to explain that laugh."
​"I will explain it before the voyage is over, Miss Earle. I can't explain it just now."
"Ah, then you admit you were untruthful when you said you laughed because you saw me?"
"I may as well admit it. You seem to know things intuitively. I am not nearly as truthful a person as I thought I was until I met you. You seem the very embodiment of truth. If I had not met you, I imagine I should have gone through life thinking myself one of the most truthful men in New York."
"Perhaps that would not be saying very much for yourself," replied the young lady, as she took her place in the steamer chair.
"I am sorry you have such a poor opinion of us New Yorkers," said the young man. "Why are you so late this morning?"
"I am not late; it is you who are early. This is my usual time. I have been a very punctual person all my life."
"There you go again, speaking as if you were ever so old."
"I am."
"Well, I don't believe it. I wish, however, that you had confidence enough in me to tell me some thing about yourself. Do you know, I was ​thinking this morning that I had met you before somewhere? I feel almost certain I have."
"Well, that is quite possible, you know. You are a New Yorker, and I have lived in New York for a great number of years, much as you seem to dislike that phrase."
"New York! Oh, that is like saying you have lived in America and I have lived in America. We might live for hundreds of years in New York and never meet one another!"
"That is very true, except that the time is a little long."
"Then won't you tell me something about yourself?"
"No, I will not."
"Why?"
"Why? Well, if you will tell me why you have the right to ask such a question, I shall answer why."
"Oh, if you talk of rights, I suppose I haven't the right. But I am willing to tell you anything about myself. Now, a fair exchange, you know——"
"But I don't wish to know anything about you."
"Oh, thank you."
George Morris's face clouded, and he sat silent for a few moments.
​"I presume," he said again, "that you think me very impertinent?"
"Well, frankly, I do."
Morris gazed out at the sea, and Miss Earle opened the book which she had brought with her, and began to read. After a while her companion said:
"I think that you are a little too harsh with me, Miss Earle."
The young lady placed her finger between the leaves of the book and closed it, looking up at him with a frank, calm expression in her dark eyes, but said nothing.
"You see, it's like this. I said to you a little while since that I seem to have known you before. Now, I'll tell you what I was thinking of when you met me this morning. I was thinking what a curious thing it would be if I had been acquainted with you some time during my past life, and had forgotten you, while you had remembered me."
"That was very flattering to me," said the young lady. "I don't wonder you laughed."
"That is why I did not wish to tell you what I had been thinking of—just for fear that you would put a wrong construction on it—as you have done. But now you can't say anything much harsher to me than you have said, and so I tell you frankly just what ​I thought, and why I asked you those questions which you seem to think are so impertinent. Besides this, you know, a sea acquaintance is different from any other acquaintance. As I said the first time I spoke to you—or the second—there is no one here to introduce us. On land, when a person is introduced to another person, he does not say, 'Miss Earle, this is Mr. Morris, who is a younger partner in the dry-goods house of So-and-so.' He merely says, 'Miss Earle, Mr. Morris,' and there it is. If you want to find anything out about him you can ask your introducer or ask your friends, and you can find out. Now, on shipboard it is entirely different. Suppose, for instance, that I did not tell you who I am, and—if you will pardon me for suggesting such an absurd supposition—imagine that you wanted to find out, how could you do it?"
Miss Earle looked at him for a moment, and then she answered:
"I would ask that blond young lady."
This reply was so utterly unexpected by Morris that he looked at her with wide eyes, the picture of a man dumfounded. At that moment the smoking-room steward came up to them and said:
"Will you have your coffee now, sir?"
"Coffee!" cried Morris, as if he had never heard the word before. "Coffee!"
​"Yes," answered Miss Earle sweetly, "we will have the coffee now, if you please. You will have a cup with me, will you not, Mr. Morris?"
"Yes, I will, if it is not too much trouble."
"Oh, it is no trouble to me," said the young lady; "some trouble to the steward, but I believe even for him that it is not a trouble that cannot be recompensed."
Morris sipped his coffee in silence. Every now and then Miss Earle stole a quiet look at him, and apparently was waiting for him to again resume the conversation. This he did not seem in a hurry to do. At last she said:
"Mr. Morris, suppose we were on shipboard and that we had become acquainted without the friendly intervention of an introducer, and suppose, if such a supposition is at all within the bounds of probability, that you wanted to find out something about me, how would you go about it?"
"How would I go about it?"
"Yes. How?"
"I would go about it in what would be the worst possible way. I would frankly ask you, and you would as frankly snub me."
"Suppose, then, while declining to tell you anything about myself, I were to refer you to somebody who would give you the information you ​desire; would you take the opportunity of learning?"
"I would prefer to hear from yourself anything I desired to learn."
"Now, that is very nicely said, Mr. Morris, and you make me feel almost sorry for having spoken to you as I did. Still, if you really want to find out something about me, I shall tell you someone whom you can ask, and who will doubtless answer you."
"Who is that? The captain?"
"No. It is the same person to whom I should go if I wished to have information of you—the blond young lady."
"Do you mean to say you know her?" asked the astonished young man.
"I said nothing of the sort."
"Well, do you know her?"
"No, I do not."
"Do you know her name?"
"No, I do not even know her name."
"Have you ever met her before you came on board this ship?"
"Yes, I have."
"Well, if that isn't the most astonishing thing I ever heard!"
"I don't see why it is. You say you thought ​you had met me before. As you are a man, no doubt you have forgotten it. I say I think I have met that young lady before. As she is a woman, I don't think she will have forgotten. If you have any interest in the matter at all you might inquire."
"I shall do nothing of the sort."
"Well, of course, I said I thought you hadn't very much interest. I only supposed the case."
"It is not that I have not the interest, but it is that I prefer to go to the person who can best answer my question if she chooses to do so. If she doesn't choose to answer me, then I don't choose to learn."
"Now, I like that ever so much," said the young lady; "if you will get me another cup of coffee I shall be exceedingly obliged to you. My excuse is that these cups are very small, and the coffee is very good."
"I am sure you don't need any excuse," replied Morris, springing to his feet, "and I am only too happy to be your steward without the hope of the fee at the end of the voyage."
When he returned she said, "I think we had better stop the personal conversation into which we have drifted. It isn't at all pleasant to me, and I don't think it is very agreeable to you. Now, I intended this morning to give you a lesson on ​American literature. I feel that you need enlightening on the subject, and that you have neglected your opportunities, as most New York men do, and so I thought you would be glad of a lesson or two."
"I shall be very glad of it indeed. I don't know what our opportunities are, but if most New York men are like me I imagine a great many of them are in the same fix. We have very little time for the study of the literature of any country."
"And perhaps very little inclination."
"Well, you know, Miss Earle, there is some excuse for a busy man. Don't you think there is?"
"I don't think there is very much. Who in America is a busier man than Mr. Gladstone? Yet he reads nearly everything, and is familiar with almost any subject you can mention."
"Oh, Gladstone! Well, he is a man of a million. But you take the average New York man. He is worried in business, and kept on the keen jump all the year round. Then he has a vacation, say for a couple of weeks or a month, in summer, and he goes off into the woods with his fishing kit, or canoeing outfit, or his amateur photographic set, or whatever the tools of his particular fad may be. He goes to a book store and buys up a lot of paper-covered novels. There is no use of buying an ​expensive book, because he would spoil it before he gets back, and he would be sure to leave it in some shanty. So he takes those paper-covered abominations, and you will find torn copies of them scattered all through the Adirondacks, and down the St. Lawrence, and everywhere else that tourists congregate. I always tell the book store man to give me the worst lot of trash he has got, and he does. Now, what is that book you have with you?"
"This is one of Mr. Howells's novels. You will admit, at least, that you have heard of Howells, I suppose?"
"Heard of him? Oh, yes; I have read some of Howells's books. I am not as ignorant as you seem to think."
"What have you read of Mr. Howells's?"
"Well, I read 'The American'; I don't remember the others."
"'The American!' That is by Henry James."
"Is it? Well, I knew that it was by either Howells or James, I forgot which. They didn't write a book together, did they?"
"Well, not that I know of. Why, the depth of your ignorance about American literature is some thing appalling. You talk of it so jauntily that you evidently have no idea of it yourself."
"I wish you would take me in hand, Miss Earle. ​Isn't there any sort of condensed version that a person could get hold of? Couldn't you give me a synopsis of what is written, so that I might post myself up in literature without going to the trouble of reading the books?"
"The trouble! Oh, if that is the way you speak, then your case is hopeless! I suspected it for some time, but now I am certain. The trouble! The delight of reading a new novel by Howells is something that you evidently have not the remotest idea of. Why, I don't know what I would give to have with me a novel of Howells's that I had not read."
"Goodness gracious! You don't mean to say that you have read everything he has written?"
"Certainly I have, and I am reading one now that is coming out in the magazine; and I don't know what I shall do if I am not able to get the magazine when I go to Europe."
"Oh, you can get them over there right enough, and cheaper than you can in America. They publish them over there."
"Do they? Well, I am glad to hear it."
"You see, there is something about American literature that you are not acquainted with, the publication of our magazines in England, for instance. Ah, there is the breakfast gong. Well, we will have ​to postpone our lesson in literature until afterward. Will you be up here after breakfast?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Well, we will leave our chairs and rugs just where they are. I will take your book down for you. Books have the habit of disappearing if they are left around on shipboard."
After breakfast Mr. Morris went to the smoking room to enjoy his cigar, and there was challenged to a game of cards. He played one game; but his mind was evidently not on his amusement, so he excused himself from any further dissipation in that line, and walked out on deck. The promise of the morning had been more than fulfilled in the day, and the warm sunlight and mild air had brought on deck many who had not been visible up to that time. There was a long row of muffled-up figures on steamer chairs, and the deck steward was kept busy hurrying here and there attending to the wants of the passengers. Nearly everyone had a book, but many of the books were turned face downward on the steamer rugs, while the owners either talked to those next them, or gazed idly out at the blue ocean. In the long and narrow open space between the chairs and the bulwarks of the ship, the energetic pedestrians were walking up and down.
​At this stage of the voyage most of the passengers had found congenial companions, and nearly everybody was acquainted with everybody else. Morris walked along in front of the reclining passengers, scanning each one eagerly to find the person he wanted, but she was not there. Remembering then that the chairs had been on the other side of the ship, he continued his walk around the wheel house, and there he saw Miss Earle, and sitting beside her was the blond young lady talking vivaciously, while Miss Earle listened.
Morris hesitated for a moment, but before he could turn back the young lady sprang to her feet, and said:
"Oh, Mr. Morris, am I sitting in your chair?"
"What makes you think it is my chair?" asked that gentleman, not in the most genial tone of voice.
"I thought so," replied the young lady, with a laugh, "because it was near Miss Earle."
Miss Earle did not look at all pleased at this remark. She colored slightly, and, taking the open book from her lap, began to read.
"You are quite welcome to the chair," replied Morris, and the moment the words were spoken he felt that somehow it was one of those things he would rather have left unsaid, as far as Miss Earle ​was concerned. "I beg that you will not disturb yourself," he continued; and, raising his hat to the lady, he continued his walk.
A chance acquaintance joined him, changing his step to suit that of Morris, and talked with him on the prospects of the next year being a good business season in the United States. Morris answered rather absent-mindedly, and it was nearly lunch time before he had an opportunity of going back to see whether or not Miss Earle's companion had left. When he reached the spot where they had been sitting he found things the very reverse of what he had hoped. Miss Earle's chair was vacant, but her companion sat there, idly turning over the leaves of the book that Miss Earle had been reading.
"Won't you sit down, Mr. Morris?" said the young woman, looking up at him with a winning smile. "Miss Earle has gone to dress for lunch. I should do the same thing, but, alas! I am too indolent."
Morris hesitated for a moment, and then sat down beside her.
"Why do you act so perfectly horrid to me?" asked the young lady, closing the book sharply.
"I was not aware that I acted horridly to anybody," answered Morris.
​"You know well enough that you have been trying your very best to avoid me."
"I think you are mistaken. I seldom try to avoid anyone, and I see no reason why I should try to avoid you. Do you know of any reason?"
The young lady blushed and looked down at her book, whose leaves she again began to turn.
"I thought," she said at last, "that you might have some feeling against me, and I have no doubt you judge me very harshly. You never did make any allowances."
Morris gave a little laugh that was half a sneer.
"Allowances?" he said.
"Yes, allowances. You know you always were harsh with me, George, always." And as she looked up at him her blue eyes were filled with tears, and there was a quiver at the corner of her mouth.
"What a splendid actress you would make, Blanche," said the young man, calling her by her name for the first time.
She gave him a quick look as he did so. "Actress!" she cried. "No one was ever less an actress than I am, and you know that."
"Oh, well, what's the use of us talking? It's all right. We made a little mistake, that's all, and ​people often make mistakes in this life, don't they, Blanche?"
"Yes," sobbed that young lady, putting her dainty silk handkerchief to her eyes.
"Now, for goodness' sake," said the young man, "don't do that. People will think I am scolding you, and certainly there is no one in this world who has less right to scold you than I have."
"I thought," murmured the young lady, from behind her handkerchief, "that we might at least be friends. I didn't think you could ever act so harshly toward me as you have done for the past few days."
"Act?" cried the young man. "Bless me, I haven't acted one way or the other. I simply haven't had the pleasure of meeting you till the other evening, or morning, whichever it was. I have said nothing, and done nothing. I don't see how I could be accused of acting, or of anything else."
"I think," sobbed the young lady, "that you might at least have spoken kindly to me."
"Good gracious!" cried Morris, starting up, "here comes Miss Earle. For Heaven's sake put up that handkerchief."
But Blanche merely sank her face lower in it, ​while silent sobs shook her somewhat slender form.
Miss Earle stood for a moment amazed as she looked at Morris's flushed face, and at the bowed head of the young lady beside him; then, without a word, she turned and walked away.
"I wish to goodness," said Morris harshly, "that if you are going to have a fit of crying you would not have it on deck, and where people can see you."
The young woman at once straightened up, and flashed a look at him in which there were no traces of her former emotion.
"People!" she said scornfully. "Much you care about people. It is because Miss Katherine Earle saw me that you are annoyed. You are afraid that it will interfere with your flirtation with her."
"Flirtation?"
"Yes, flirtation. Surely it can't be anything more serious?"
"Why should it not be something more serious?" asked Morris, very coldly.
The blue eyes opened wide in apparent astonishment.
"Would you marry her?" she said, with telling emphasis upon the word.
"Why not?" he answered. "Any man might be proud to marry a lady like Miss Earle."
​"A lady! Much of a lady she is. Why, she is one of your own shopgirls. You know it."
"Shopgirls?" cried Morris, in astonishment.
"Yes, shopgirls. You don't mean to say that she has concealed that fact from you, or that you didn't know it by seeing her in the store?"
"A shopgirl in my store?" he murmured, bewildered. "I knew I had seen her somewhere."
Blanche laughed a little irritating laugh.
"What a splendid item it would make for the society papers," she said. "The junior partner marries one of his own shopgirls, or, worse still, the junior partner and one of his shopgirls leave New York on the City of Buffalo, and are married in England. I hope that the reporters will not get the particulars of the affair." Then, rising, she left the amazed young man to his thoughts.
George Morris saw nothing more of Miss Katherine Earle that day.
"I wonder what that vixen has said to her," he thought, as he turned in for the night.
FIFTH DAY.
In the early morning of the fifth day out, George Morris paced the deck alone.
"Shopgirl or not," he had said to himself, "Miss ​Katherine Earle is much more of a lady than the other ever was." But as he paced the deck, and as Miss Earle did not appear, he began to wonder more and more what had been said to her in the long talk of yesterday forenoon. Meanwhile Miss Earle sat in her own stateroom, thinking over the same subject. Blanche had sweetly asked her permission to sit down beside her.
"I know no ladies on board," she said, "and I think I have met you before."
"Yes," answered Miss Earle, "I think we have met before."
"How good of you to have remembered me," said Blanche kindly.
"I think," replied Miss Earle, "that it is more remarkable that you should remember me than that I should remember you. Ladies very rarely notice the shopgirls who wait upon them."
"You seemed so superior to your station," said Blanche, "that I could not help remembering you, and could not help thinking what a pity it was you had to be there."
"I do not think that there is anything either superior or inferior about the station. It is quite as honorable, or dishonorable, whichever it may be, as any other branch of business. I cannot see, for instance, why my station, selling ribbons at retail, ​should be any more dishonorable than the station of the head of the firm, who merely does on a very large scale what I was trying to do for him on a very limited scale."
"Still," said Blanche, with a yawn, "people do not all look upon it in exactly that light."
" Hardly any two persons look on any one thing in the same light. I hope you have enjoyed your voyage so far?"
"I have not enjoyed it very much," replied the young lady with a sigh.
"I am sorry to hear that. I presume your father has been ill most of the way?"
"My father?" cried the other, looking at her questioner.
"Yes, I did not see him at the table since the first day."
"Oh, he has had to keep his room almost since we left. He is a very poor sailor."
"Then that must make your voyage rather unpleasant."
The blond young lady made no reply, but, taking up the book which Miss Earle was reading, said, "You don't find Mr. Morris much of a reader, I presume? He used not to be."
"I know very little about Mr. Morris," said Miss Earle freezingly.
​"Why, you knew him before you came on board, did you not?" questioned the other, raising her eyebrows.
"No, I did not."
"You certainly know he is junior partner in the establishment where you work?"
"I know that, yes, but I had never spoken to him before I met him on board this steamer."
"Is that possible? Might I ask you if there is any probability of your becoming interested in Mr. Morris?"
"Interested! What do you mean?"
"Oh, you know well enough what I mean. We girls do not need to be humbugs with each other, whatever we may be before the men. When a young woman meets a young man in the early morning, and has coffee with him, and when she reads to him, and tries to cultivate his literary tastes, whatever they may be, she certainly shows some interest in the young man, don't you think so?"
Miss Earle looked for a moment indignantly at her questioner. "I do not recognize your right," she said, "to ask me such a question."
"No? Then let me tell you that I have every right to ask it. I assure you that I have thought over the matter deeply before I spoke. It seemed ​to me there was one chance in a thousand—only one chance in a thousand, remember—that you were acting honestly, and on that one chance I took the liberty of speaking to you. The right I have to ask such a question is this Mr. George Morris has been engaged to me for several years."
"Engaged to you?"
"Yes. If you don't believe it, ask him!"
"It is the very last question in the world I would ask anybody."
"Well, then, you will have to take my word for it. I hope you are not very shocked, Miss Earle, to hear what I have had to tell you."
"Shocked? Oh, dear, no. Why should I be? It is really a matter of no interest to me, I assure you."
"Well, I am very glad to hear you say so. I did not know but you might have become more interested in Mr. Morris than you would care to own. I think myself that he is quite a fascinating young gentleman; but I thought it only just to you that you should know exactly how matters stood."
"I am sure I am very much obliged to you."
This much of the conversation Miss Earle had thought over in her own room that morning. "Did it make a difference to her or not?" that was the question she was asking herself. The information ​had certainly affected her opinion of Mr. Morris, and she smiled to herself rather bitterly as she thought of his claiming to be so exceedingly truth ful. Miss Earle did not, however, go up on deck until the breakfast gong had rung.
"Good-morning," said Morris, as he took his place at the little table. "I was like the boy on the burning deck this morning, when all but he had fled. I was very much disappointed that you did not come up, and have your usual cup of coffee."
"I am sorry to hear that," said Miss Earle; "if I had known I was disappointing anybody I should have been there."
"Miss Katherine," he said, "you are a humbug. You knew very well that I would be disappointed if you did not come."
The young lady looked up at him, and for a moment she thought of telling him that her name was Miss Earle, but for some reason she did not do so.
"I want you to promise now," he continued, "that to-morrow morning you will be on deck as usual."
"Has it become a usual thing, then?"
"Well, that's what I am trying to make it," he answered. "Will you promise?"
"Yes, I promise."
"Very well, then, I look on that as settled. ​Now, about to-day. What are you going to do with yourself after breakfast?"
"Oh, the usual thing, I suppose. I shall sit in my steamer chair and read an interesting book."
"And what is the interesting book for to-day?"
"It is a little volume by Henry James, entitled 'The Siege of London'."
"Why, I never knew that London had been besieged. When did that happen?"
"Well, I haven't got very far in the book yet, but it seems to have happened quite recently, within a year or two, I think. It is one of the latest of Mr. James's short stories. I have not read it yet."
"Ah! then the siege is not historical?"
"Not historical further than Mr. James is the historian."
"Now, Miss Earle, are you good at reading out loud?"
"No, I am not."
"Why, how decisively you say that. I couldn't answer like that, because I don't know whether I am or not. I have never tried any of it. But if you will allow me, I will read that book out to you. I should like to have the good points indicated to me, and also the defects."
"There are not likely to be many defects," said the young lady. "Mr. James is a very correct ​writer. But I do not care either to read aloud, or have a book read to me. Besides, we disturb the conversation or the reading of anyone else who happens to sit near us. I prefer to enjoy a book by reading it myself."
"Ah, I see you are resolved cruelly to shut me out of all participation in your enjoyment."
"Oh, not at all. I shall be very happy to discuss the book with you afterward. You should read it for yourself. Then, when you have done so, we might have a talk on its merits or demerits, if you think, after you have read it, that it has any."
"Any what? merits or demerits?"
"Well, any either."
"No; I will tell you a better plan than that. I am not going to waste my time reading it."
"Waste, indeed!"
"Certainly waste. Not when I have a much better plan of finding out what is in the book. I am going to get you to tell me the story after you have read it."
"Oh, indeed; and suppose I refuse?"
"Will you?"
"Well, I don't know. I only said suppose."
"Then I shall spend the rest of the voyage trying to persuade you."
"I am not very easily persuaded, Mr. Morris."
​"I believe that," said the young man. "I presume I may sit beside you while you are reading your book?"
"You certainly may, if you wish to. The deck is not mine, only that portion of it, I suppose, which I occupy with the steamer chair. I have no authority over any of the rest."
"Now, is that a refusal or an acceptance?"
"It is whichever you choose to think."
"Well, if it is a refusal, it is probably softening down the 'No,' but if it is an acceptance it is rather an ungracious one, it seems to me."
"Well, then, I shall be frank with you. I am very much interested in this book. I should a great deal rather read it than talk to you."
"Oh, thank you, Miss Earle. There can be no possible doubt about your meaning now."
"Well, I am glad of that, Mr. Morris. I am always pleased to think that I can speak in such a way as not to be misunderstood."
"I don't see any possible way of misunderstanding that. I wish I did."
"And then, after lunch," said the young lady, "I think I shall finish the book before that time if you care to sit beside me or to walk the deck with me, I shall be very glad to tell you the story."
"Now, that is perfectly delightful," cried the ​young man. "You throw a person down into the depths, so that he will appreciate all the more being brought up into the light again."
"Oh, not at all. I have no such dramatic ideas in speaking frankly with you. I merely mean that this forenoon I wish to have to myself, because I am interested in my book. At the end of the forenoon I shall probably be tired of my book and will prefer a talk with you. 1 don't see why you should think it odd that a person should say exactly what a person means."
"And then I suppose in the evening you will be tired of talking with me, and will want to take up your book again."
"Possibly."
"And if you are, you won't hesitate a moment about saying so?"
"Certainly not."
"Well, you are a decidedly frank young lady, Miss Earle; and, after all, I don't know but what I like that sort of thing best. I think if all the world were honest we would all have a better time of it here."
"Do you really think so?"
"Yes, I do."
"You believe in honesty, then?"
"Why, certainly. Have you seen anything in my ​conduct or bearing that would induce you to think that I did not believe in honesty?"
"No, I can't say I have. Still, honesty is such a rare quality that a person naturally is surprised when one comes unexpectedly upon it."
George Morris found the forenoon rather tedious and lonesome. He sat in the smoking room, and once or twice he ventured near where Miss Earle sat engrossed in her book, in the hope that the volume might have been put aside for the time, and that he would have some excuse for sitting down and talking with her. Once, as he passed, she looked up with a bright smile and nodded to him.
"Nearly through?" he asked dolefully.
"With 'The Siege of London'?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Oh, I am through that long ago, and have begun another story."
"Now, that is not according to contract," claimed Morris. "The contract was that, when you got through with 'The Siege of London,' you were to let me talk with you, and that you were to tell me the story."
"That was not my interpretation of it. Our bargain, as I understood it, was that I was to have this forenoon to myself, and that I was to use the ​forenoon for reading. I believe my engagement with you began in the afternoon."
"I wish it did," said the young man, with a wistful look.
"You wish what?" she said, glancing up at him sharply.
He blushed as he bent over toward her and whispered, "That our engagement, Miss Katherine, began in the afternoon."
The color mounted rapidly into her cheeks, and for a moment George Morris thought he had gone too far. It seemed as if a sharp reply was ready on her lips; but, as on another occasion, she checked it and said nothing. Then she opened her book and began to read. He waited for a moment and said:
"Miss Earle, have I offended you?"
"Did you mean to give offense?" she asked.
"No, certainly, I did not."
"Then why should you think you had offended me?"
"Well, I don't know. I——" he stammered.
Miss Earle looked at him with such clear, innocent, and unwavering eyes that the young man felt that he could neither apologize nor make an explanation.
"I'm afraid," he said, "that I am encroaching on your time."
​"Yes, I think you are; that is, if you intend to live up to your contract, and let me live up to mine. You have no idea how much more interesting this book is than you are."
"Why, you are not a bit flattering, Miss Earle, are you?"
"No, I don't think I am. Do you try to be?"
"I'm afraid that in my lifetime I have tried to be, but I assure you, Miss Earle, that I don't try to be flattering, or try to be anything but what I really am when I am in your company. To tell the truth, I am too much afraid of you."
Miss Earle smiled and went on with her reading, while Morris went once more back into the smoking room.
"Now then," said George Morris, when lunch was over, "which is it to be? The luxurious languor of the steamer chair, or the energetic exercise of the deck? Take your choice."
"Well," answered the young lady, "as I have been enjoying the luxurious languor all the forenoon, I prefer the energetic exercise, if it is agreeable to you, for a while, at least."
"It is very agreeable to me. I am all energy this afternoon. In fact, now that you have consented to allow me to talk with you, I feel as if I were imbued with a new life."
​"Dear me!" said she, "and all because of the privilege of talking to me?"
"All."
"How nice that is. You are sure that it is not the effect of the sea air?"
"Quite certain. I had the sea air this forenoon, you know."
"Oh, yes, I had forgotten that."
"Well, which side of the deck, then?"
"Oh, whichever is the least popular side. I dislike a crowd."
"I think, Miss Earle, that we will have this side pretty much to ourselves. The madd'ing crowd seem to have a preference for the sunny part of the ship. Now, then, for the siege of London. Who besieged it?"
"A lady."
"Did she succeed?"
"She did."
"Well, I am very glad to hear it, indeed. What was she besieging it for?"
"For social position, I presume."
"Then, as we say out West, I suppose she had a pretty hard row to hoe?"
"Yes, she had."
"Well, I never can get at the story by cross-questioning. Now, supposing that you tell it to me."
​"I think that you had better take the book and read it. I am not a good story-teller."
"Why, I thought we Americans were considered excellent story-tellers."
"We Americans?"
"Oh, I remember now, you do not lay claim to being an American. You are English, I think you said?"
"I said nothing of the kind. I merely said I lay no claims to being an American."
"Yes, that was it."
"Well, you will be pleased to know that this lady in the siege of London was an American. You seem so anxious to establish a person's nationality that I am glad to be able to tell you at the very first that she was an American, and, what is more, seemed to be a Western American."
"Seemed? Oh, there we get into uncertainties again. If I like to know whether persons are Americans or not, it naturally follows that I am anxious to know whether they were Western or Eastern Americans. Aren't you sure she was a Westerner?"
"The story, unfortunately, leaves that a little vague, so if it displeases you I shall be glad to stop the telling of it."
"Oh, no; don't do that!. I am quite satisfied to ​take her as an American citizen; whether she is East or West, or North or South, does not make the slightest difference to me. Please go on with the story."
"Well, the other characters, I am happy to be able to say, are not at all indefinite in the matter of nationality. One is an Englishman; he is even more than that, he is an English nobleman. The other is an American. Then there is the English nobleman's mother, who, of course, is an English woman; and the American's sister, married to an Englishman, and she, of course, is English-American. Does that satisfy you?"
"Perfectly. Go on."
"It seems that the besieger, the heroine of the story, if you may call her so, had a past."
"Has not everybody had a past?"
"Oh, no. This past is known to the American and is unknown to the English nobleman."
"Ah, I see; and the American is in love with her in spite of her past?"
"Not in Mr. James's story."
"Oh, I beg pardon. Well, go on; I shall not interrupt again."
"It is the English nobleman who is in love with her in spite of his absence of knowledge about her ​past. The English nobleman's mother is very much against the match. She tries to get the American to tell what the past of this woman is. The American refuses to do so. In fact, in Paris he has half promised the besieger not to say anything about her past. She is besieging London, and she wishes the American to remain neutral. But the nobleman's mother at last gets the American to promise that he will tell her son what he knows of this woman's past. The American informs the woman what he has promised the nobleman's mother to do, and at this moment the nobleman enters the room. The besieger of London, feeling that her game is up, leaves them together. The American says to the nobleman, who stands rather stiffly before him, 'If you wish to ask me any questions regarding the lady who has gone out I shall be happy to tell you.' Those are not the words of the book, but they are in substance what he said. The nobleman looked at him for a moment with that hauteur which, we presume, belongs to noblemen, and said quietly, 'I wish to know nothing.' Now, that strikes me as a very dramatic point in the story."
"But didn't he wish to know anything of the woman whom he was going to marry?"
​"I presume that, naturally, he did."
"And yet he did not take the opportunity of finding out when he had the chance?"
"No, he did not."
"Well, what do you think of that?"
"What do I think of it? I think it's a very dramatic point in the story."
"Yes, but what do you think of his wisdom in refusing to find out what sort of a woman he was going to marry? Was he a fool or was he a very noble man?"
"Why, I thought I said at the first that he was a nobleman, an Englishman."
"Miss Katherine, you are dodging the question. I asked your opinion of that man's wisdom. Was he wise, or was he a fool?"
"What do you think about it? Do you think he was a fool, or a wise man?"
"Well, I asked you for your opinion first. However, I have very little hesitation in saying that a man who marries a woman of whom he knows nothing is a fool."
"Oh, but he was well acquainted with this woman. It was only her past that he knew nothing about."
"Well, I think you must admit that a woman's past and a man's past are very important parts of their lives. Don't you agree with me?"
​"I agree with you so seldom that I should hesitate to say I did on this occasion. But I have told the story very badly. You will have to read it for yourself to thoroughly appreciate the different situations, and then we can discuss the matter intelligently."
"You evidently think the man was very noble in refusing to hear anything about the past of the lady he was interested in."
"I confess I do. He was noble, at least, in refusing to let a third party tell him. If he wished any information he should have asked the lady himself."
"Yes, but supposing she refused to answer him?"
"Then, I think he should either have declined to have anything more to do with her, or, if he kept up his acquaintance, he should have taken her just as she was, without any reference to her past."
"I suppose you are right. Still, it is a very serious thing for two people to marry without knowing something of each others' lives."
"I am tired of walking," said Miss Earle. "I am now going to seek comfort in the luxuriousness, as you call it, of my steamer chair."
"And may I go with you?" asked the young man.
"If you also are tired of walking."
"You know," he said, "you promised the whole ​afternoon. You took the forenoon with 'The Siege' and now I don't wish to be cheated out of my half of the day."
"Very well, I am rather interested in another story, and if you will take 'The Siege of London,' and read it, you'll find how much better the book is than my telling of the story."
George Morris had, of course, to content himself with this proposition, and they walked together to the steamer chairs, over which the gayly colored rugs were spread.
"Shall I get your book for you?" asked the young man, as he picked up the rugs.
"Thank you," answered Miss Earle, with a laugh, "you have already done so," for, as he shook out the rugs, the two books, which were small handy volumes, fell out on the deck.
"I see you won't accept my hint about not leaving the books around. You will lose some precious volume one of these days."
"Oh, I fold them in the rugs, and they are all right. Now, here is your volume. Sit down there and read it."
"That means also, 'and keep quiet,' I suppose?"
"I don't imagine you are versatile enough to read and talk at the same time. Are you?"
"I should be very tempted to try it this afternoon."
​Miss Earle went on with her reading, and Morris pretended to go on with his. He soon found, however, that he could not concentrate his attention on the little volume in his hand, and so quickly abandoned the attempt, and spent his time in meditation and in casting furtive glances at his fair companion over the top of his book. He thought the steamer chair a perfectly delightful invention. It was an easy, comfortable, and adjustable apparatus, that allowed a person to sit up or to recline at almost any angle. He pushed his chair back a little so that he could watch the profile of Miss Katherine Earle, and the dark tresses that formed a frame for it, without risking the chance of having his espionage discovered.
"Aren't you comfortable?" asked the young lady, as he shoved back his chair.
"I am very, very comfortable," replied the young man.
"I am glad of that," she said, as she resumed her reading.
George Morris watched her turn leaf after leaf as he reclined lazily in his chair, with half-closed eyes, and said to himself, "Shopgirl or not, past or not, I'm going to propose to that young lady the first good opportunity I get. I wonder what she will say?"
​"How do you like it?" cried the young lady he was thinking of, with a suddenness that made Morris jump in his chair.
"Like it?" he cried; "oh, I like it immensely."
"How far have you got?" she continued.
"How far? Oh, a great distance. Very much farther than I would have thought it possible when I began this voyage."
Miss Earle turned and looked at him with wide-open eyes, as he made this strange reply.
"What are you speaking of?" she said.
"Oh, of everything—of the book, of the voyage, of the day."
"I was speaking of the book," she replied quietly. "Are you sure you have not fallen asleep and been dreaming?"
"Fallen asleep? No. Dreaming? Yes."
"Well, I hope your dreams have been pleasant ones."
"They have."
Miss Earle, who seemed to think it best not to follow her investigations any further, turned once more to her own book, and read it until it was time to dress for dinner.
When that important meal was over, Morris said to Miss Earle: "Do you know you still owe me part of the day?"
​"I thought you said you had a very pleasant afternoon."
"So I had. So pleasant, you see, that I want to have the pleasure prolonged. I want you to come out and have a walk on the deck now in the starlight. It is a lovely night, and, besides, you are now half-way across the ocean, and yet I don't think you have been out once to see the phosphorescence. That is one of the standard sights of an ocean voyage. Will you come?"
Although the words were commonplace enough, there was a tremor in his voice which gave a meaning to them that could not be misunderstood. Miss Earle looked at him with serene composure, and yet with a touch of reproachfulness in her glance. "He talks like this to me," she said to herself, "while he is engaged to another woman." "Yes," she answered aloud, with more firmness in her voice than might have seemed necessary, "I will be happy to walk on the deck with you to see the phosphorescence."
He helped to hinder her for a moment in adjusting her wraps, and they went out in the starlit night together.
"Now," he said, "if we are fortunate enough to find the place behind the after wheelhouse vacant we can have a splendid view of the phosphorescence."
​"Is it so much in demand that the place is generally crowded?" she asked.
"I may tell you in confidence," replied Mr. Morris, "that this particular portion of the boat is always very popular. Soon as the evening shades prevail the place is apt to be pre-empted by couples that are very fond of——"
"Phosphorescence," interjected the young lady.
"Yes," he said, with a smile that she could not see in the darkness, "of phosphorescence."
"I should think," said she, as they walked toward the stern of the boat, "that in scientific researches of that sort, the more people who were there, the more interesting the discussion would be, and the more chance a person would have to improve his mind on the subject of phosphorescence, or other matters pertaining to the sea."
"Yes," replied Morris. "A person naturally would think that, and yet, strange as it may appear, if there ever was a time when two is company and three is a crowd, it is when looking at the phosphorescence that follows the wake of an ocean steamer."
"Really?" observed the young lady archly. "You told me, I remember, that you had crossed the ocean several times."
The young man laughed joyously at this bit of ​repartée, and his companion joined him with a laugh that was low and musical.
"He seems very sure of his ground," said she to herself. "Well, we shall see."
As they came to the end of the boat and passed behind the temporary wheelhouse which is erected there, and which is filled with débris of various sorts, blocks and tackle, and old steamer chairs, Morris noticed that two others were there before them, standing close together, with arms upon the bulwarks. They were standing very close together, so close, in fact, that, in the darkness, it seemed as if but one person was there. But as Morris stumbled over some chains, the dark, united shadow resolved itself quickly into two distinct, separate shadows. A flag pole stood at the extreme end of the ship, inclining backward from the center of the bulwarks, and leaning over the troubled, luminous sea beneath; the two who had taken their position first were on one side of the flag pole, and Morris and Miss Earle on the other. Their coming had evidently broken the spell for the others. After waiting for a few moments, the lady took the arm of the gentleman and walked forward.
"Now," said Morris, with a sigh, "we have the phosphorescence to ourselves."
"It is very, very strange," remarked the lady in a ​low voice. "It seems as if a person could see weird shapes arising in the air, as if in torment."
The young man said nothing for a few moments. He cleared his throat several times as if to speak, but still remained silent. Miss Earle gazed down at the restless, luminous water. The throb, throb of the great ship made the bulwarks on which their arms rested tremble and quiver.
Finally Morris seemed to muster up courage enough to begin, and he said one word:
"Katherine." As he said this he placed his hand on hers as it lay white before him in the darkness upon the trembling bulwark. It seemed to him that she made a motion to withdraw her hand, and then allowed it to remain where it was.
"Katherine," he continued, in a voice that he hardly recognized as his own, "we have known each other only a very short time comparatively; but, as I think I said to you once before, a day on ship board may be as long as a month on shore. Katherine, I want to ask you a question, and yet I do not know—I cannot find—I—I don't know what words to use."
The young lady turned her face toward him, and he saw her clear-cut profile sharply outlined against the glowing water as he looked down at her. Although the young man struggled against the ​emotion, which is usually experienced by any man in his position, yet he felt reasonably sure of the answer to his question. She had come with him out into the night. She had allowed her hand to remain in his. He was, therefore, stricken dumb with amazement when she replied, in a soft and musical voice:
"You do not know what to say? What do you usually say on such an occasion?"
"Usually say?" he gasped in dismay. "I do not understand you. What do you mean?"
"Isn't my meaning plain enough? Am I the first young lady to whom you have not known exactly what to say?"
Mr. Morris straightened up, and folded his arms across his breast; then, ridiculously enough, this struck him as a heroic attitude, and altogether unsuitable for an American, so he thrust his hands deep in his coat pockets.
"Miss Earle," he said, "I knew that you could be cruel, but I did not think it possible that you could be so cruel as this."
"Is the cruelty all on my side, Mr. Morris?" she answered. "Have you been perfectly honest and frank with me? You know you have not. Now, I shall be perfectly honest and frank with you. I like you very much indeed. I have not the ​slightest hesitation in saying this, because it is true, and I don't care whether you know it or whether anybody else knows it or not."
As she said this the hope which Morris had felt at first, and which had been dashed so rudely to the ground, now returned, and he attempted to put his arm about her and draw her to him; but the young lady quickly eluded his grasp, stepping to the other side of the flag pole, and putting her hand upon it.
"Mr. Morris," she said, "there is no use of your saying anything further. There is a barrier between us; you know it as well as I. I would like us to be friends as usual; but, if we are to be, you will have to remember the barrier, and keep to your own side of it."
" I know of no barrier," cried Morris vehemently, attempting to come over to her side.
"There is the barrier," she said, placing her hand on the flag pole. "My place is on this side of that barrier; your place is on the other. If you come on this side of that flag pole, I shall leave you. If you remain on your own side, I shall be very glad to talk with you."
Morris sullenly took his place on the other side of the flag pole.
"Has there been anything in my actions," said the young lady, "during the time we have been ​acquainted, that would lead you to expect a different answer?"
"Yes. You have treated me outrageously at times, and that gave me some hope."
Miss Earle laughed her low, musical laugh at this remark.
"Oh, you may laugh," said Morris savagely; "but it is no laughing matter to me, I assure you."
"Oh, it will be, Mr. Morris, when you come to think of this episode after you get on shore. It will seem to you very, very funny indeed; and when you speak to the next young lady on the same subject, perhaps you will think of how outrageously I have treated your remarks to-night, and be glad that there are so few young women in the world who would act as I have done."
"Where did you get the notion," inquired George Morris, "that I am in the habit of proposing to young ladies? It is a most ridiculous idea. I have been engaged once, I confess it. I made a mistake, and I am sorry for it. There is surely nothing criminal in that."
"It depends."
"Depends on what?"
"It depends on how the other party feels about it. It takes two to make an engagement, and it should take two to break it."
​"Well, it didn't in my case," said the young man.
"So I understand," replied Miss Earle. "Mr. Morris, I wish you a very good evening." And before he could say a word she had disappeared in the darkness, leaving him to ponder bitterly over the events of the evening.
SIXTH DAY.
In the vague hope of meeting Miss Earle, Morris rose early, and for a while paced the deck alone; but she did not appear. Neither did he have the pleasure of her company at breakfast. The more the young man thought of their interview of the previous evening, the more puzzled he was.
Miss Earle had frankly confessed that she thought a great deal of him, and yet she had treated him with an unfeelingness which left him sore and bitter. She might have refused him; that was her right, of course. But she need not have done it so sarcastically. He walked the deck after breakfast, but saw nothing of Miss Earle. As he paced up and down, he met the very person of all others whom he did not wish to meet.
"Good-morning, Mr. Morris," she said lightly, holding out her hand.
​"Good-morning," he answered, taking it without much warmth.
"You are walking the deck all alone, I see. May I accompany you?"
"Certainly," said the young man, and with that she put her hand on his arm and they walked together the first two rounds without saying anything to each other. Then she looked up at him, with a bright smile, and said, "So she refused you?"
"How do you know?" answered the young man, reddening and turning a quick look at her.
"How do I know?" laughed the other. "How should I know?"
For a moment it flashed across his mind that Miss Katherine Earle had spoken of their interview of last night; but a moment later he dismissed the suspicion as unworthy.
"How do you know?" he repeated.
"Because I was told so on very good authority."
"I don't believe it."
"Ha, ha! now you are very rude. It is very rude to say to a lady that she doesn't speak the truth."
"Well, rude or not, you are not speaking the truth. Nobody told you such a thing."
"My dear George, how impolite you are. What ​a perfect bear you have grown to be. Do you want to know who told me?"
"I don't care to know anything about it."
"Well, nevertheless, I shall tell you. You told me."
"I did? Nonsense, I never said anything about it."
"Yes, you did. Your walk showed it. The dejected look showed it, and when I spoke to you, your actions, your tone, and your words told it to me plainer than if you had said, 'I proposed to Miss Earle last night and I was rejected.' You poor, dear innocent, if you don't brighten up you will tell it to the whole ship."
"I am sure, Blanche, that I am very much obliged to you for the interest you take in me. Very much obliged, indeed."
"Oh, no, you are not; and now, don't try to be sarcastic; it really doesn't suit your manner at all. I was very anxious to know how your little flirtation had turned out. I really was. You know I have an interest in you, George, and always will have, and I wouldn't like that spiteful little black-haired minx to have got you, and I am very glad she refused you, although why she did so I cannot for the life of me imagine."
"It must be hard for you to comprehend why she refused me, now that I am a partner in the firm."
​Blanche looked down upon the deck, and did not answer.
"I am glad," she said finally, looking up brightly at him with her innocent blue eyes, "that you did not put off your proposal until to-night. We expect to be at Queenstown to-night some time, and we leave there and go on through by the Lakes of Killarney. So, you see, if you hadn't proposed last night I should have known nothing at all about how the matter turned out, and I should have died of curiosity and anxiety to know."
"Oh, I would have written to you," said Morris. "Leave me your address now, and I'll write and let you know how it turns out."
"Oh," she cried quickly, "then it isn't ended yet? I didn't think you were a man who would need to be refused twice or thrice."
"I should be glad to be refused by Miss Earle five hundred times."
"Indeed?"
"Yes, five hundred times, if on the five hundredth and first time she accepted."
"Is it really so serious as that?"
"It is just exactly that serious."
"Then your talk to me after all was only pretense?"
"No, only a mistake."
​"What an escape I have had!"
"You have, indeed."
"Ah, here comes Miss Earle. Really, for a lady who has rejected a gentleman, she does not look as supremely happy as she might. I must go and have a talk with her."
"Look here, Blanche," cried the young man angrily, "if you say a word to her about what we have been speaking of, I'll—"
"What will you do?" said the young lady sweetly.
Morris stood looking at her. He didn't himself know what he would do; and Blanche, bowing to him, walked along the deck, and sat down in the steamer chair beside Miss Earle, who gave her a very scant recognition.
"Now, you needn't be so cool and dignified," said the lady. "George and I have been talking over the matter, and I told him he wasn't to feel discouraged at a first refusal, if he is resolved to have a shopgirl for his wife."
"What! Mr. Morris and you have been discussing me, have you?"
"Is there anything forbidden in that, Miss Earle? You must remember that George and I are very, very old friends, old and dear friends. Did you refuse him on my account? I know you like him."
​"Like him?" said Miss Earle, with a fierce light in her eyes, as she looked at her tormentor. "Yes, I like him, and I'll tell you more than that"; she bent over and added in an intense whisper, "I love him, and if you say another word to me about him, or if you dare to discuss me with him, I shall go up to him where he stands now and accept him. I shall say to him, 'George Morris, I love you.' Now, if you doubt I shall do that, just continue in your present style of conversation."
Blanche leaned back in the steamer chair and turned a trifle pale. Then she laughed, that irritating little laugh of hers, and said, "Really, I did not think it had gone so far as that. I'll bid you good-morning."
The moment the chair was vacated, George Morris strolled up and sat down on it.
"What has that vixen been saying to you?" he asked.
"That vixen," said Miss Earle quietly, "has been telling me that you and she were discussing me this morning, and discussing the conversation that took place last night."
"It is a lie," said Morris.
"What is? What I say, or what she said, or what she says you said?"
"That we were discussing you, or discussing our ​conversation, is not true. Forgive me for using the coarser word. This was how it was; she came up to me—"
"My dear Mr. Morris, don't say a word. I know well enough that you would not discuss the matter with anybody. I, perhaps, may go so far as to say, least of all with her. Still, Mr. Morris, you must remember this, that even if you do not like her now—"
"Like her?" cried Morris; "I hate her."
"As I was going to say, and it is very hard for me to say it, Mr. Morris, you have a duty toward her as you we all have our duties to perform," said Miss Earle, with a broken voice. "You must do yours, and I must do mine. It may be hard, but it is settled. I cannot talk this morning. Excuse me." And she rose and left him sitting there.
"What in the world does the girl mean? I am glad that witch gets off at Queenstown. I believe it is she who has mixed everything up. I wish I knew what she has been saying."
Miss Earle kept very closely to her room that day, and in the evening, as they approached the Fastnet Light, George Morris was not able to find her to tell her of the fact that they had sighted land. He took the liberty, however, of scribbling a little note to her, which the stewardess promised to ​deliver. He waited around the foot of the companion way for an answer. The answer came in the person of Miss Katherine herself.
If refusing a man was any satisfaction, it seemed as if Miss Katherine Earle had obtained very little gratification from it. She looked weary and sad as she took the young man's arm, and her smile as she looked up at him had something very pathetic in it, as if a word might bring the tears. They sat in the chairs and watched the Irish coast. Morris pointed out objects here and there, and told her what they were. At last, when they went down to supper together, he said:
"We will be at Queenstown some time to-night. It will be quite a curious sight in the moonlight. Wouldn't you like to stay up and see it?"
"I think I would," she answered. "I take so few ocean voyages that I wish to get all the nautical experiences possible."
The young man looked at her sharply, then he said:
"Well, the stop at Queenstown is one of the experiences. May I send the steward to rap at your door when the engine stops?"
"Oh, I shall stay up in the saloon until that time."
"It may be a little late. It may be as late as one ​or two o'clock in the morning. We can't tell. I should think the best thing for you would be to take a rest until the time comes. I think, Miss Earle, you need it."
It was a little after twelve o'clock when the engine stopped. The saloon was dimly lighted, and porters were hurrying to and fro, getting up the baggage which belonged to those who were going to get off at Queenstown. The night was very still, and rather cold. The lights of Queenstown could be seen here and there along the semi-circular range of hills on which the town stood. Passengers who were to land stood around the deck well muffled up, and others who had come to bid them good-by were talking sleepily with them. Morris was about to send the steward to Miss Earle's room, when that young lady herself appeared. There was something spiritlike about her, wrapped in her long cloak, as she walked through the half-darkness to meet George Morris.
"I was just going to send for you," he said.
"I did not sleep any," was the answer, "and the moment the engine stopped I knew we were there. Shall we go on deck?"
"Yes," he said, "but come away from the crowd," and with that he led her toward the stern of the boat. For a moment Miss Earle seemed to hold ​back, but finally she walked along by his side firmly to where they had stood the night before. With seeming intention Morris tried to take his place beside her, but Miss Earle, quietly folding her cloak around her, stood on the opposite side of the flag pole, and, as if there should be no forgetfulness on his part, she reached up her hand and laid it against the staff.
"She evidently meant what she said," thought Morris to himself, with a sigh, as he watched the low, dim outlines of the hills around Queenstown Harbor, and the twinkling lights here and there.
"That is the tender coming now," he said, pointing to the red and green lights of the approaching boat. "How small it looks beside our monster steamship."
Miss Earle shivered.
"I pity the poor folks who have to get up at this hour of the night and go ashore. I should a great deal rather go back to my stateroom."
"Well, there is one passenger I am not sorry for," said Morris, "and that is the young woman who has, I am afraid, been saying something to you which has made you deal more harshly with me than perhaps you might otherwise have done. I wish you would tell me what she said."
"She has said nothing," murmured Miss Earle, ​with a sigh, "but what you yourself have confirmed, I do not pay much attention to what she says."
"Well, you don't pay much attention to what I say, either," he replied. "However, as I say, there is one person I am not sorry for; I even wish it were raining. I am very revengeful, you see."
"I do not know that I am very sorry for her myself," replied Miss Earle frankly; "but I am sorry for her poor old father, who hasn't appeared in the saloon a single day except the first. He has been sick the entire voyage."
"Her father?" cried Morris, with a rising inflection in his voice.
"Certainly."
"Why, bless my soul! Her father has been dead for ages and ages."
"Then who is the old man she is with?"
"Old man! It would do me good to have her hear you call him the old man. Why, that is her husband."
"Her husband!" echoed Miss Earle, with wide-open eyes. "I thought he was her father."
"Oh, not at all. It is true, as you know, that I was engaged to the young lady, and I presume, if I had become a partner in our firm sooner, we would have been married. But that was a longer time coming than suited my young lady's convenience, ​and so she threw me over with as little ceremony as you would toss a penny to a beggar, and she married this old man for his wealth, I presume. I don't see exactly why she should take a fancy to him otherwise. I felt very cut up about it, of course, and I thought if I took this voyage I would at least be rid for a while of the thought of her. They are now on their wedding trip. That is the reason your steamer chair was broken, Miss Earle. Here I came on board an ocean steamer to get rid of the sight or thought of a certain woman, and to find that I was penned up with that woman, even if her aged husband was with her, for eight or nine days, was too much for me. So I raced up the deck and tried to get ashore. I didn't succeed in that, but I did succeed in breaking your chair."
Miss Earle was evidently very much astonished at this revelation, but she said nothing. After waiting in vain for her to speak, Morris gazed off at the dim shore. When he looked around he noticed that Miss Earle was standing on his side of the flag staff. There was no longer a barrier between them.
SEVENTH DAY.
If George Morris were asked to say which day of all his life had been the most thoroughly enjoyable, he would probably have answered that the seventh of his voyage from New York to Liverpool was the red-letter day of his life. The sea was as calm as it was possible for a sea to be. The sun shone bright and warm. Toward the latter part of the day they saw the mountains of Wales, which, from the steamer's deck, seemed but a low range of hills. It did not detract from Morris's enjoyment to know that Mrs. Blanche was now on the troublous island of Ireland, and that he was sailing over this summer sea with the lady who, the night before, had promised to be his wife.
During the day Morris and Katherine sat together on the sunny side of the ship looking at the Welsh coast. Their books lay unread on the rug, and there were long periods of silence between them.
"I don't believe," said Morris, "that anything could be more perfectly delightful than this. I wish the shaft would break."
"I hope it won't," answered the young lady; "the chances are you would be as cross as a bear before two days had gone past, and would want to go off in a small boat."
​"Oh, I should be quite willing to go off in a small boat if you would come with me. I would do that now."
"I am very comfortable where I am," answered Miss Katherine. "I know when to let well enough alone."
"And I don't, I suppose you mean?"
"Well, if you wanted to change this perfectly delightful day for any other day, or this perfectly luxurious and comfortable mode of travel for any other method, I should suspect you of not letting well enough alone."
"I have to admit," said George, "that I am completely and serenely happy. The only thing that bothers me is that to-night we shall be in Liverpool. I wish this hazy and dreamy weather could last forever, and I am sure I could stand two extra days of it going just as we are now. I think with regret of how much of this voyage we have wasted."
"Oh, you think it was wasted, do you?"
"Well, wasted as compared with this sort of life. This seems to me like a rest after a long chase."
"Up the deck?" asked the young lady, smiling at him.
"Now, see here," said Morris, "we may as well understand this first as last, that unfortunate ​up-the-deck chase has to be left out of our future life. I am not going to be twitted about that race every time a certain young lady takes a notion to have a sort of joke upon me."
"That was no joke, George. It was the most serious race you ever ran in your life. You were running away from one woman, and, poor blind young man, you ran right in the arms of another. The danger you have run into is ever so much greater than the one you were running away from."
"Oh, I realize that," said the young man lightly; "that's what makes me so solemn to-day, you know." His hand stole under the steamer rugs and imprisoned her own.
"I am afraid people will notice that," she said quietly.
"Well, let them; I don't care. I don't know anybody on board this ship, anyhow, except you, and if you realized how very little I care for their opinions you would not try to withdraw your hand."
"I am not trying very hard," answered the young woman; and then there was another long silence. Finally she continued:
"I am going to take the steamer chair and do it up in ribbons when I get ashore."
"I am afraid it will not be a very substantial chair, ​no matter what you do with it. It will be a trap for those who sit in it."
"Are you speaking of your own experience?"
"No, of yours."
"George," she said, after a long pause, "did you like her very much?"
"Her?" exclaimed the young man, surprised. "Who?"
"Why, the young lady you ran away from. You know very well whom I mean."
"Like her? Why, I hate her."
"Yes, perhaps you do now. But I am asking of former years. How long were you engaged to her?"
"Engaged? Let me see, I have been engaged just about—well, not twenty-four hours yet. I was never engaged before. I thought I was, but I wasn't really."
Miss Earle shook her head. "You must have liked her very much," she said, "or you never would have proposed marriage to her. You never would have been engaged to her. You never would have felt so badly when she—"
"Oh, say it out," said George, "jilted me, that is the word."
"No, that is not the phrase I wanted to use. She didn't really jilt you, you know. It was ​because you didn't have, or thought you didn't have, money enough. She would like to be married to you to-day."
George shuddered.
"I wish," he said, "that you wouldn't mar a perfect day by a horrible suggestion."
"The suggestion would not have been so horrible a month ago."
"My dear girl," said Morris, rousing himself up, "it's a subject that I do not care much to talk about, but all young men, or reasonably young men, make mistakes in their lives. That was my mistake. My great luck was that it was discovered in time. As a general thing, affairs in this world are admirably planned, but it does seem to me a great mistake that young people have to choose companions for life at an age when they really haven't the judgment to choose a house and lot. Now, confess yourself, I am not your first lover, am I?"
Miss Earle looked at him for a moment before replying.
"You remember," she said, "that once you spoke of not having to incriminate yourself. You refused to answer a question I asked you on that ground. Now, I think this is a case in which I would be quite justified in refusing to answer. If I told you that you were my first lover, you would perhaps be ​manlike enough to think that after all you had only taken what nobody else had expressed a desire for. A man does not seem to value anything unless someone else is struggling for it."
"Why, what sage and valuable ideas you have about men, haven't you, my dear?"
"Well, you can't deny but what there is truth in them."
"I not only can, but I do. On behalf of my fellow-men, and on behalf of myself, I deny it."
"Then, on the other hand," she continued, "if I confessed to you that I did have half a score or half a dozen of lovers, you would perhaps think I had been jilting somebody or had been jilted. So you see, taking it all in, and thinking the matter over, I shall refuse to answer your question."
"Then you will not confess?"
"Yes, I shall confess. I have been wanting to confess to you for some little time, and have felt guilty because I did not do so."
"I am prepared to receive the confession," replied the young man lazily, "and to grant absolution."
"Well, you talk a great deal about America and about Americans, and talk as if you were proud of the country, and of its ways, and of its people."
"Why, I am," answered the young man.
​"Very well, then; according to your creed one person is just as good as another."
"Oh, I don't say that; I don't hold that for a moment. I don't think I am as good as you, for instance."
"But what I mean is this, that one's occupation does not necessarily give one a lower station than another. If that is not your belief then you are not a true American, that is all."
"Well, yes, that is my belief. I will admit I believe all that. What of it?"
"What of it? There is this of it. You are the junior partner of a large establishment in New York?"
"Nothing criminal in that, is there?"
"Oh, I don't put it as an accusation, I am merely stating the fact. You admit the fact, of course?"
"Yes. The fact is admitted, and marked 'Exhibit A,' and placed in evidence. Now, what next?"
"In the same establishment there was a young woman who sold ribbons to all comers."
"Yes, I admit that also, and the young lady's name was Miss Katherine Earle."
"Oh, you knew it, then?"
"Why, certainly I did."
"You knew it before you proposed to me."
​"Oh, I seem to have known that fact for years and years."
"She told it to you."
"She? What she?"
"You know very well who I mean, George. She told it to you, didn't she?"
"Why, don't you think I remembered you—remembered seeing you there?"
"I know very well you did not. You may have seen me there, but you did not remember me. The moment I spoke to you on the deck that day in the broken chair, I saw at once you did not remember me; and there is very little use of your trying to pretend you thought of it afterward. She told it to you, didn't she?"
"Now, look here, Katherine, it isn't I who am making a confession, it is you. It is not customary for a penitent to cross-examine the father confessor in that style."
"It does not make any difference whether you confess or not, George; I shall always know she told you that. After all, I wish she had left it for me to tell. I believe I dislike that woman very much."
"Shake hands, Kate, over that. So do I. Now, my dear, tell me what she told you."
"Then she did tell you that, did she?"
​"Why, if you are so sure of it without my admitting it, why do you ask again?"
"I suppose because I wanted to make doubly sure."
"Well, then, assurance is doubly sure. I admit she did."
"And you listened to her, George?" said Katherine reproachfully.
"Listened? Why, of course I did. I couldn't help myself. She said it before I knew what she was going to say. She didn't give me the chance that your man had in that story you were speaking of. I said something that irritated her, and she out with it at once, as if it had been a crime on your part. I did not look on it in that light, and don't now. Anyhow, you are not going back to the ribbon counter."
"No," answered the young lady, with a sigh, looking dreamily out into the hazy distance. "No, I am not."
"At least, not that side of the counter," said George.
She looked at him for a moment, as if she did not understand him; then she laughed lightly.
"Now," said Morris, "I have done most of the confessing on this confession of yours. Supposing ​I make a confession, and ask you to tell me what she told you."
"Well, she told me that you were a very fascinating young man," answered Katherine, with a sigh.
"Really. And did after-acquaintance corroborate that statement?"
"I never had occasion to tell her she was mistaken."
"What else did she say? Didn't mention anything about my prospects or financial standing in any way?"
"No, we did not touch on that subject."
"Come, now, you cannot evade the question. What else did she say to you about me?"
"I don't know that it is quite right to tell you, but I suppose I may. She said that you were engaged to her."
"Had been?"
"No, were."
"Oh, that's it. She did not tell you she was on her wedding tour?"
"No, she did not."
"And didn't you speak to her about her father being on board?"
Katherine laughed her low, enjoyable laugh.
"Yes," she said, "I did, and I did not think till ​this moment of how flustered she looked. But she recovered her lost ground with a great deal of dexterity."
"By George, I should like to have heard that! I am avenged!"
"Well, so is she," was the answer.
"How is that?"
"You are engaged to me, are you not?"
Before George could make any suitable reply to this bit of humbug, one of the officers of the ship stopped before them.
"Well," he said, "I am afraid we shall not see Liverpool to-night."
"Really. Why?" asked George.
"This haze is settling down into a fog. It will be as thick as pea soup before an hour. I expect there will be a good deal of grumbling among the passengers."
As he walked on, George said to Katherine, "There are two passengers who won't grumble any, will they, my dear?"
"I know one who won't," she answered.
The fog grew thicker and thicker; the vessel slowed down, and finally stopped, sounding every now and then its mournful, timber-shaking whistle.
EIGHTH DAY.
On the afternoon of the eighth day George Morris and Katherine Earle stood together on the deck of the tender, looking back at the huge steamship which they had just left.
"When we return," he said, "I think we shall choose this ship."
"Return?" she answered, looking at him.
"Why, certainly; we are going back, are we not?"
"Dear me," she replied, "I had not thought of that. You see, when I left America I did not intend to go back."
"Did you not? I thought you were only over here for the trip."
"Oh, no. I told you I came on business, not on pleasure."
"And did you intend to stay over here?"
"Certainly."
"Why, that's strange; I never thought of that."
"It is strange, too," said Katherine, "that I never thought of going back."
"And—and," said the young man, "won't you go?"
She pressed his arm, and stood motionless.
"'Where thou goest, I will go. Thy people shall be my people.'"
​"That's a quotation, I suppose?" said George.
"It is," answered Katherine.
"Well, you see, as I told you, I am not very well read up on the books of the day."
"I don't know whether you would call that one of the books of the day or not," said Katherine; "it is from the Bible."
"Oh!" answered the other. "I believe, Kate, you will spend the rest of your life laughing at me."
"Oh, no," said the young lady, "I always thought I was fitted for missionary life. Now, look what a chance I have."
"You have taken a big contract, I admit."
They had very little trouble with their luggage. It is true that the English officials looked rather searchingly in Katherine's trunk for dynamite, but, their fears being allayed in that direction, the trunks were soon chalked and on the back of a stout porter, who transferred them to the top of a cab.
"I tell you what it is," said George, "it takes an American custom-house official to make the average American feel ashamed of his country."
"Why, I did not think there was anything over there that could make you feel ashamed of your country. You are such a thorough-going American."
​"Well, the customs officials in New York have a knack of making a person feel that he belongs to no place on earth."
They drove to the big Liverpool hotel which is usually frequented by Americans who land in that city, and George spent the afternoon in attending to business in Liverpool, which he said he did not expect to have to look after when he left America, but which he desired very much to get some information about.
Katherine innocently asked if she could be of any assistance to him, and he replied that she might later on, but not at the present state of proceedings.
In the evening they went to a theater together, and took a long route back to the hotel.
"It isn't a very pretty city," said Miss Earle.
"Oh, I think you are mistaken," replied her lover. "To me it is the most beautiful city in the world."
"Do you really mean that?" she said, looking at him with surprise.
"Yes, I do. It is the first city through which I have walked with the lady who is to be my wife."
"Oh, indeed," remarked the lady who was to be his wife, "and have you never walked with—"
"Now, see here," said Morris, "that subject is barred out. We left all those allusions on the ​steamer. I say I am walking now with the lady who is to be my wife. I think that statement of the case is perfectly correct, is it not?"
"I believe it is rather more accurate than the average statement of the average American."
"Now, Katherine," he said, "do you know what information I have been looking up since I have been in Liverpool?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," she said. "Property?"
"No, not property."
"Looking after your baggage, probably?"
"Well, I think you have got it this time. I was looking after my baggage. I was trying to find out how and when we could get married."
"Oh!"
"Yes, oh! Does that shock you? I find they have some idiotic arrangement by which a person has to live here three months before he can be married, although I was given some hope that, by paying for it, a person could get a special license. If that is the case, I am going to have a special license to-morrow."
"Indeed?"
"Yes, indeed. Then we can be married at the hotel."
"And don't you think, George, that I might have something to say about that?"
​"Oh, certainly! I intended to talk with you about it. Of course I am talking with you now on that subject. You admitted the possibility of our getting married. I believe I had better get you to put it down in writing, or have you say it before witnesses, or something of that sort."
"Well, I shouldn't like to be married in a hotel."
"In a church, then? I suppose I can make arrangements that will include a church. A parson will marry us. That parson, if he is the right sort, will have a church. It stands to reason, therefore, that if we give him the contract he will give us the use of his church—quid pro quo, you know."
"Don't talk flippantly, please. I think it better to wait until to-morrow, George, before you do any thing rash. I want to see something of the country. I want us to take a little journey together to-morrow, and then, out in the country, not in this grimy, sooty city, we will make arrangements for our marriage."
"All right, my dear. Where do you intend to go?"
"While you have been wasting your time in getting information relating to matrimony, I have been examining time-tables. Where I want to go is two or three hours' ride from here. We can take one of the morning trains, and when we get to the ​place I will allow you to hire a conveyance, and we will have a real country drive. Will you go with me?"
"Will I? You better believe I will. But you see, Katherine, I want to get married as soon as possible. Then we can take a little trip on the Continent before it is time for us to go back to America. You have never been on the Continent, have you?"
"Never."
"Well, I am very glad of that. I shall be your guide, philosopher, and friend, and, added to that, your husband."
"Very well, we will arrange all that on our little excursion to-morrow."
NINTH DAY.
Spring in England and one of those perfect spring days in which all rural England looks like a garden. The landscape was especially beautiful to American eyes, after the more rugged views of Transatlantic scenery. The hedges were closely clipped, the fields of the deepest green, and the hills far away were blue and hazy in the distance.
"There is no getting over the fact," said Morris, ​"that this is the prettiest country in the whole world."
During most of the journey Katherine Earle sat back in her corner of the first-class compartment, and gazed silently out of the flying windows. She seemed too deeply impressed with the beauty of the scene to care for conversation even with the man she was to marry. At last they stopped at a pretty little rural station, with the name of the place done in flowers of vivid color that stood out against the brown of the earth around them and the green turf which formed the sloping bank.
"Now," said George, as they stood on the platform, "whither away? Which direction?"
"I want to see," said she, "a real, genuine, old English country home."
"A castle?"
"No, not a castle."
"Oh, I know what you want. Something like Haddon Hall, or that sort of thing. An old manor house. Well, wait a minute, and I'll talk to the station-master, and find out all there is about this part of the country."
And before she could stop him, he had gone to make his inquiry of that official. Shortly after, he came back with a list of places that were worth seeing, which he named.
​"Holmwood House," she repeated. "Let us see that. How far is it?"
George again made inquiries, and found that it was about eight miles away. The station-master assured him that the road thither was one of the prettiest drives in the whole country.
"Now, what kind of a conveyance will you have? There are four-wheeled cabs, and there is even a hansom to be had. Will you have two horses or one, and will you have a coachman?"
"None of these," she said, "if you can get something you can drive yourself—I suppose you are a driver?"
"Oh, I have driven a buggy."
"Well, get some sort of conveyance that we can both sit in while you drive."
"But don't you think we will get lost?"
"We can inquire the way," she said, "and if we do get lost, it won't matter. I want to have a long talk with you before we reach the place."
They crossed the railway by a bridge over the line, and descended into a valley along which the road wound.
The outfit which George had secured was a neat little cart made of wood in the natural color and varnished, and a trim little pony, which looked ridiculously small for two grown people, and yet ​was, as George afterward said, "as tough as a pine knot."
The pony trotted merrily along, and needed no urging. George doubtless was a good driver, but whatever talents he had in that line were not brought into play. The pony was a treasure that had apparently no bad qualities. For a long time the two in the cart rode along the smooth highway silently, until at last Morris broke out with:
"Oh, see here! This is not according to contract. You said you wanted a long talk, and now you are complacently saying nothing."
"I do not know exactly how to begin."
"Is it so serious as all that?"
"It is not serious exactly—it is merely, as it were, a continuation of the confession."
"I thought we were through with that long ago. Are there any more horrible revelations?"
She looked at him with something like reproach in her eyes.
"If you are going to talk flippantly, I think I will postpone what I have to say until another time."
"My dear Kate, give a man a chance. He can't reform in a moment. I never had my flippancy checked before. Now then, I am serious again. What appalling—I mean—you see how difficult it ​is, Katherine—I mean, what serious subject shall we discuss?"
"Some other time."
"No—now. I insist on it. Otherwise I will know I am unforgiven."
"There is nothing to forgive. I merely wanted to tell you something more than you know about my own history."
"I know more now than that man in the story."
"He did not object to the knowledge, you know. He objected to receiving it from a third person. Now I am not a third person, am I?"
"Indeed, you are not. You are first person singular—at present—the first person to me at least. There, I am afraid I have dropped into flippancy again."
"That is not flippancy. That is very nice."
The interval shall be unreported.
At last Katherine said quietly, "My mother came from this part of England."
"Ah! That is why you wanted to come here."
"That is why I wanted to come here. She was her father's only daughter, and, strange to say, he was very fond of her, and proud of her."
"Why strange?"
"Strange from his action for years after. She married against his will. He never forgave her. ​My father did not seem to have the knack of getting along in the world, and he moved to America in the hope of bettering his condition. He did not better it. My father died ten years ago, a prematurely broken down man, and my mother and I struggled along as best we could until she died two years ago. My grandfather returned her letter unopened when mother wrote to him ten years ago, although the letter had a black border around it. When I think of her I find it hard to forgive him, so I suppose some of his nature has been transmitted to me."
"Find it hard? Katherine, if you were not an angel you would find it impossible."
"Well, there is nothing more to tell, or at least, not much. I thought you should know this. I intended to tell you that last day on shipboard, but it seemed to me that here was where it should be told—among the hills and valleys that she saw when she was my age."
"Katherine, my dear, do not think about it any more than you can help. It will only uselessly depress you. Here is a man coming. Let us find out now whether we have lost our way or not."
They had.
Even after that they managed to get up some wrong lanes and byways, and took several wrong ​turnings; but by means of inquiry from everyone they met, they succeeded at last in reaching the place they were in search of.
There was an old and gray porter's lodge, and an old and gray gateway, with two tall, moss-grown stone pillars, and an iron gate between them. On the top of the pillars were crumbled stone shields, seemingly held in place by a lion on each pillar.
"Is this Holmwood House?" asked Morris of the old and gray man who came out of the porter's lodge.
"Yes, sir, it be," replied the man.
"Are visitors permitted to see the house and the grounds?"
"No, they be'ant," was the answer. "Visitors were allowed on Saturdays in the old Squire's time, but since he died they tell me the estate is in the courts, and we have orders from the London lawyers to let nobody in."
"I can make it worth your while," said George, feeling in his vest pocket; "this lady would like to see the house."
The old man shook his head, even although George showed him a gold piece between his finger and thumb. Morris was astonished at this, for he had the mistaken belief which all Americans have, that a tip in Europe, if it is only large enough, will accomplish anything.
​"I think perhaps I can get permission," said Katherine, "if you will let me talk a while to the old man."
"All right. Go ahead," said George. "I believe you could wheedle anybody into doing what he shouldn't do."
"Now after saying that, I shall not allow you to listen, I shall step down and talk with him a moment, and you can drive on for a little distance and come back."
"Oh, that's all right," said George, "I know how it is. You don't want to give away the secret of your power. Be careful, now, in stepping down. This is not an American buggy." But before he had finished the warning, Katherine had jumped lightly on the gravel, and stood waiting for him to drive on. When he came back he found the iron gates open.
"I shall not get in again," she said. "You may leave the pony with this man, George; he will take care of it. We can walk up the avenue to the house."
After a short walk under the spreading old oaks they came in sight of the house, which was of red brick and of the Elizabethan style of architecture.
"I am rather disappointed with that," said George; "I always though told English homesteads were of stone."
​"Well, this one at least is of brick, and I imagine you will find a great many of them are of the same material."
They met with further opposition from the housekeeper, who came to the door which the servant had opened after the bell was rung.
She would allow nobody in the house, she said. As for Giles, if he allowed people on the grounds that was his own lookout, but she had been forbidden by the lawyers to allow anybody in the house, and she had let nobody in, and she wasn't going to let anybody in.
"Shall I offer her a tip?" asked George, in a whisper.
"No, don't do that."
"You can't wheedle her like you did the old man, you know. A woman may do a great deal with a man, but when she meets another woman she meets her match. You women know each other, you know."
Meanwhile the housekeeper, who had been about to shut the door, seemed to pause and regard the young lady with a good deal of curiosity. Her attention had before that time been taken up with the gentleman.
"Well, I shall walk to the end of the terrace, and give you a chance to try your wiles. But I am ​ready to bet ten dollars that you don't succeed."
"I'll take you," answered the young lady.
"Yes, you said you would that night on the steamer."
"Oh, that's a very good way of getting out of a hopeless bet."
"I am ready to make the bet all right enough, but I know you haven't a ten-dollar bill about you."
"Well, that is very true, for I have changed all my money to English currency; but I am willing to bet its equivalent."
Morris walked to the end of the terrace. When he got back he found that the door of the house was as wide open as the gates of the park had been.
"There is something uncanny about all this," he said. "I am just beginning to see that you have a most dangerous power of fascination. I could understand it with old Giles, but I must admit that I thought the stern housekeeper would—"
"My dear George," interrupted Katherine, "almost anything can be accomplished with people, if you only go about it the right way."
"Now, what is there to be seen in this house?"
"All that there is to be seen about any old English house. I thought, perhaps, you might be interested in it."
​"Oh, I am. But I mean, aren't there any notable things? For instance, I was in Haddon Hall once, and they showed me the back stairway where a fair lady had eloped with her lover. Have they anything of that kind to show here?"
Miss Earle was silent for a few moments. "Yes," she said, "I am afraid they have."
"Afraid? Why, that is perfectly delightful. Did the young lady of the house elope with her lover?"
"Oh, don't talk in that way, George," she said. "Please don't."
"Well, I won't, if you say so. I admit those little episodes generally turn out badly. Still you must acknowledge that they add a great interest to an old house of the Elizabethan age like this?"
Miss Earle was silent. They had, by this time, gone up the polished stairway, which was dimly lighted by a large window of stained glass.
"Here we are in the portrait hall," said Miss Earle. "There is a picture here that I have never seen, although I have heard of it, and I want to see it. Where is it?" she asked, turning to the housekeeper, who had been following them up the stairs.
"This way, my lady," answered the housekeeper, as she brought them before a painting completely concealed by a dark covering of cloth.
​"Why is it covered in that way? To keep the dust from it?"
The housekeeper hesitated for a moment; then she said:
"The old Squire, my lady, put that on when she left, and it has never been taken off since."
"Then take it off at once," demanded Katherine Earle, in a tone that astonished Morris.
The housekeeper, who was too dignified to take down the covering herself, went to find the servant, but Miss Earle, with a gesture of impatience, grasped the cloth and tore it from its place, reveal ing the full-length portrait of a young lady.
Morris looked at the portrait in astonishment, and then at the girl by his side.
"Why, Katherine," he cried, "it is your picture!"
The young lady was standing with her hands tightly clenched and her lips quivering with nervous excitement. There were tears in her eyes, and she did not answer her lover for a moment; then she said:
"No, it is not my picture. This is a portrait of my mother."