Ninth day out. Sixty days has September, April, June and November. From January until May The rain it raineth every day. All the rest have thirty-one Without a single gleam of sun. If any should have thirty-two, They'd be dull and dirty, too! ~ Adapted by Smith for Smith's Log
Rain, fog, mist, drizzle, more rain. Such was the waste world throughwhich the Clan Macgregor wallowed. Other ships passed her, hooting asthey went. Small craft began to loom up under her massive bows, andslide away from beneath her towering stern, always eluding Fate, as itseemed, by miraculous inches. And slower and ever slower moved thesea-mammoth, lugubriously trumpeting her distress and dismay at theplight in which she found herself.
Thus and no otherwise would the Tyro have vented his grief and chagrin,had he possessed competent vocal organs, more lost and befogged than theship which bore him and his sorrow to an alien land. For breakfast hadcome and gone, and then luncheon and dinner, and nowhere had he caughtso much as a glimpse of Little Miss Grouch. At ten o'clock that night hewas standing immersed in gloom, within and without, staring out over therail into a world of blackness. Far out in the void, a bell tolled. TheTyro resumed his purposeless promenade, meditating cheerlessly uponburied hopes.
Now, were individuals required, as are craft, to carry fog signals, thismaritime record might be something other than it is. The collision washead on, and the impact severe. The lighter craft recoiled against therail.
"Oh!" she said.
"You!" cried the Tyro, with the voice of glad tidings.
"How you frightened me!" she said, but the tone indicated more ofrelief, not to say content, than alarm.
"I'm sorry. Where have you been all day?"
"Packing."
"Oh!" There was a pause. Then: "Lord Guenn doesn't know."
"Doesn't know what?"
"Doesn't know why. I asked him, you know. When you--er--disappeared. SoI have to ask you again. Why?"
"Aren't you afraid that when you die you'll change into aquestion-mark?"
"Not at all. I intend to be answered before I die. Long before.One--two--three; why?"
But she was ready for the question now. "About Mr. Van Dam, you mean?"said she with elaborate carelessness. "Oh, well, you see, I'd be Mrs.Denyse's cousin in that case and, after a week of her, I've concludedthat it isn't worth the price."
"Hard-hearted Parent will be displeased."
"I'm afraid so. Perhaps he'll cut me off with a shilling."
"I hope so."
"Now, that isn't a bit kind of you," she complained. "I'm not fitted forpoverty. Not that it would be literally a shilling. But to have to doeverything on twelve thousand a year--"
"How much?"
"That's all I can call my really own."
"And you consider that insufficient?" asked the Tyro, in a queer,strained voice.
"Not as long as papa pays my principal bills," she explained. "But ofcourse, to live on--" An expressive shrug furnished the conclusion.
"For some years I lived on less than a tenth of it," said he.
"No! It couldn't be done."
"Don't you know anything at all about life?" he demanded, almostangrily.
"Of course I do. But I don't bother about money and such things."
"I do. I've had to all my life. Even now, when I consider myself verywell off, I can make only a little more than the income which youconsider mere pin-money."
"Yet you can buy houses on the Battery," she insinuated.
"Only through the option that gives me the inside track. And even thatwill make a huge hole in my pile."
"Ah, well," she said petulantly. "I don't see what difference it makes.Anyway, I'm bored. Aren't you going to be any more amusing than this atGuenn Oaks?"
"I'm not coming to Guenn Oaks."
"Who are you to say what you are or are not going to do--Slave?" shesaid with her most imperious air.
At the tone, he rallied a difficult smile. "I'm the Honest Workingman.Whereas you are--" he spread his hands out in a suave gesture, which wasexceedingly displeasing to Little Miss Grouch--"a mirage."
"A mirage?" she repeated.
"The Eternally Unattainable."
"Long words always make my head ache."
"I'll state it mathematically. If you concentrate your powerfulintellect upon the problem you will perceive that two plus two equalsfour."
"In that faith I live and die! But what it has to do with Bertie Guenn'sinvitation--"
"The sum proves up equally when raised to thousands, or millions."
"What concern has a Perfect Pig with figures?" she asked wistfully, andlifted a hesitant hand in the darkness.
It fell lightly on his arm. In the soft gloom her face glimmered, dimlywarm to his vision, upturned to his. The fog covered much that mightotherwise have been seen, but failed to smother what might have been(and in fact was, as Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson, turning the angleof the deck, halted and tactfully melted away) heard. To wit:--
"Oh!" in a feminine and tremulous pitch.
"Forgive me," said the Tyro hoarsely. "That was for good-bye."
Was it a detaining hand that went forth in the darkness? If so, itfailed of its purpose, for the Tyro had gone.
Then and there Little Miss Grouch proceeded to pervert a proverb.
"Man proposes," she observed to herself, philosophically. "Maybe notalways, though. But, anyway, woman disposes. I don't think that wasreally good-bye."
Behold now a complete reversal of conditions from the initial night ofthe voyage. For now it was the Tyro who went to bed, miserable and atodds with a hostile world; whereas Little Miss Grouch dreamed of amorrow, new, glorious, and irradiated with a more splendidadventurousness than her slave had ever previsioned.