He was finally aware of some one standing4 near and looking down at him. It was the second mate, who supported himself in a conversational5 posture6 by the hand which he stretched to the shrouds7 above their heads. “Are you a good sailor, Mr. Staniford?” he inquired. He and Staniford were friends in their way, and had talked together before this.
“Do you mean seasickness8? Why?” Staniford looked up at the mate's face.
“Well, we're going to get it, I guess, before long. We shall soon be off the Spanish coast. We've had a great run so far.”
“If it comes we must stand it. But I make it a rule never to be seasick9 beforehand.”
“Well, I ain't one to borrow trouble, either. It don't run in the family. Most of us like to chance things, I chanced it for the whole war, and I come out all right. Sometimes it don't work so well.”
“Ah?” said Staniford, who knew that this was a leading remark, but forbore, as he knew Mason wished, to follow it up directly.
“One of us chanced it once too often, and of course it was a woman.”
“The risk?”
“Not the risk. My oldest sister tried tamin' a tiger. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a tiger won't tame worth a cent. But her pet was such a lamb most the while that she guessed she'd chance it. It didn't work. She's at home with mother now,—three children, of course,—and he's in hell, I s'pose. He was killed 'long-side o' me at Gettysburg. Ike was a good fellow when he was sober. But my souls, the life he led that poor girl! Yes, when a man's got that tiger in him, there ought to be some quiet little war round for puttin' him out of his misery10.” Staniford listened silently, waiting for the mate to make the application of his grim allegory. “I s'pose I'm prejudiced; but I do hate a drunkard; and when I see one of 'em makin' up to a girl, I want to go to her, and tell her she'd better take a real tiger out the show, at once.”
The idea which these words suggested sent a thrill to Staniford's heart, but he continued silent, and the mate went on, with the queer smile, which could be inferred rather than seen, working under his mustache and the humorous twinkle of his eyes evanescently evident under his cap peak.
“I don't go round criticisn' my superior officers, and I don't say anything about the responsibility the old man took. The old man's all right, accordin' to his lights; he ain't had a tiger in the family. But if that chap was to fall overboard,—well, I don't know how long it would take to lower a boat, if I was to listen to my conscience. There ain't really any help for him. He's begun too young ever to get over it. He won't be ashore11 at Try-East an hour before he's drunk. If our men had any spirits amongst 'em that could be begged, bought, or borrowed, he'd be drunk now, right along. Well, I'm off watch,” said the mate, at the tap of bells. “Guess we'll get our little gale12 pretty soon.”
“Good-night,” said Staniford, who remained pondering. He presently rose, and walked up and down the deck. He could hear Lydia and Hicks trying that song: now the voice, and now the flute13; then both together; and presently a burst of laughter. He began to be angry with her ignorance and inexperience. It became intolerable to him that a woman should be going about with no more knowledge of the world than a child, and entangling14 herself in relations with all sorts of people. It was shocking to think of that little sot, who had now made his infirmity known for all the ship's company, admitted to association with her which looked to common eyes like courtship. From the mate's insinuation that she ought to be warned, it was evident that they thought her interested in Hicks; and the mate had come, like Dunham, to leave the responsibility with Staniford. It only wanted now that Captain Jenness should appear with his appeal, direct or indirect.
While Staniford walked up and down, and scorned and raged at the idea that he had anything to do with the matter, the singing and fluting15 came to a pause in the cabin; and at the end of the next tune16, which brought him to the head of the gangway stairs, he met Lydia emerging. He stopped and spoke17 to her, having instantly resolved, at sight of her, not to do so.
“Have you come up for breath, like a mermaid18?” he asked. “Not that I'm sure mermaids19 do.”
“Oh, no,” said Lydia. “I think I dropped my handkerchief where we were sitting.”
Staniford suspected, with a sudden return to a theory of her which he had already entertained, that she had not done so. But she went lightly by him, where he stood stolid20, and picked it up; and now he suspected that she had dropped it there on purpose.
“You have come back to walk with me?”
“No!” said the girl indignantly. “I have not come back to walk with you!” She waited a moment; then she burst out with, “How dare you say such a thing to me? What right have you to speak to me so? What have I done to make you think that I would come back to—”
The fierce vibration21 in her voice made him know that her eyes were burning upon him and her lips trembling. He shrank before her passion as a man must before the justly provoked wrath22 of a woman, or even of a small girl.
“I stated a hope, not a fact,” he said in meek2 uncandor. “Don't you think you ought to have done so?”
“I don't—I don't understand you,” panted Lydia, confusedly arresting her bolts in mid-course.
Staniford pursued his guilty advantage; it was his only chance. “I gave way to Mr. Hicks when you had an engagement with me. I thought—you would come back to keep your engagement.” He was still very meek.
“Excuse me,” she said with self-reproach that would have melted the heart of any one but a man who was in the wrong, and was trying to get out of it at all hazards. “I didn't know what you meant—I—”
“If I had meant what you thought,” interrupted Staniford nobly, for he could now afford to be generous, “I should have deserved much more than you said. But I hope you won't punish my awkwardness by refusing to walk with me.”
He knew that she regarded him earnestly before she said, “I must get my shawl and hat.”
“Let me go!” he entreated23.
“You couldn't find them,” she answered, as she vanished past him. She returned, and promptly24 laid her hand in his proffered25 arm; it was as if she were eager to make him amends26 for her harshness.
Staniford took her hand out, and held it while he bowed low toward her. “I declare myself satisfied.”
“I don't understand,” said Lydia, in alarm and mortification27.
“When a subject has been personally aggrieved28 by his sovereign, his honor is restored if they merely cross swords.”
The girl laughed her delight in the extravagance. She must have been more or less than woman not to have found his flattery delicious. “But we are republicans!” she said in evasion29.
“To be sure, we are republicans. Well, then, Miss Blood, answer your free and equal one thing: is it a case of conscience?”
“How?” she asked, and Staniford did not recoil30 at the rusticity31. This how for what, and the interrogative yes, still remained. Since their first walk, she had not wanted to know, in however great surprise she found herself.
“Are you going to walk with me because you had promised?”
“Why, of course,” faltered32 Lydia.
“That isn't enough.”
“Not enough?”
“Not enough. You must walk with me because you like to do so.”
Lydia was silent.
“Do you like to do so?”
“I can't answer you,” she said, releasing her hand from him.
“It was not fair to ask you. What I wish to do is to restore the original status. You have kept your engagement to walk with me, and your conscience is clear. Now, Miss Blood, may I have your company for a little stroll over the deck of the Aroostook?” He made her another very low bow.
“What must I say?” asked Lydia, joyously33.
“That depends upon whether you consent. If you consent, you must say, 'I shall be very glad.'”
“And if I don't?”
“Oh, I can't put any such decision into words.”
Lydia mused34 a moment. “I shall be very glad,” she said, and put her hand again into the arm he offered.
As happens after such a passage they were at first silent, while they walked up and down.
“If this fine weather holds,” said Staniford, “and you continue as obliging as you are to-night, you can say, when people ask you how you went to Europe, that you walked the greater part of the way. Shall you continue so obliging? Will you walk with me every fine night?” pursued Staniford.
“Do you think I'd better say so?” she asked, with the joy still in her voice.
“Oh, I can't decide for you. I merely formulate35 your decisions after you reach them,—if they're favorable.”
“Well, then, what is this one?”
“Is it favorable?”
“You said you would formulate it.” She laughed again, and Staniford started as one does when a nebulous association crystallizes into a distinctly remembered fact.
“What a curious laugh you have!” he said. “It's like a nun36's laugh. Once in France I lodged37 near the garden of a convent where the nuns38 kept a girls' school, and I used to hear them laugh. You never happened to be a nun, Miss Blood?”
“No, indeed!” cried Lydia, as if scandalized.
“Oh, I merely meant in some previous existence. Of course, I didn't suppose there was a convent in South Bradfield.” He felt that the girl did not quite like the little slight his irony39 cast upon South Bradfield, or rather upon her for never having been anywhere else. He hastened to say, “I'm sure that in the life before this you were of the South somewhere.”
“Yes?” said Lydia, interested and pleased again as one must be in romantic talk about one's self. “Why do you think so?”
He bent
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