"Mine"s closed, thanks. I"ll take your place and hold Mr. Has...o...b.."s tea-cup."
Now, when a person with outrageously blue eyes is leaning on the arm of your steamer-chair, steadying your saucer for you, and the wind has blown everybody else off the deck except a bow-legged Chinese steward who is absorbed in tying things down, it does look as if Fate meant to be propitious.
Percival put his cup in his saucer and let his fingers touch the small hand that held it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "It"s quite worth while" he said "getting a jab in the wrist, to have you looking after me like this"]
"It"s quite worth while," he said, "getting a jab in the wrist, to have you looking after me like this. I wonder if you realize that you saved my life last night?"
"I bet I know what this is leading up to," cried Bobby, accusingly.
"What?" asked Percival, catching his lip between his teeth and looking at her with devouring eyes.
"A medal!"
"Much more serious. As a matter of fact, the truth is, I"ve been trying to get a minute alone with you all day. There"s something I want--"
"Oh, yes, I know. It"s that Manchu coat. You want it to pack, of course.
I"ll get it now."
But his fingers held hers fast to the saucer.
"You stupid child! You don"t understand. It"s yours, everything I have is--"
"Oh, goody! Here"s the rain!" cried Bobby. "Andy bet me ten pounds of candy it wouldn"t come before night. Quick, let me put your cup under the chair. Don"t bother about the cushions."
"But there"s something I"ve _got_ to say to you. You must listen to me!"
"I"ll listen to anything you like in the music-room just so it isn"t "Tales from Hoffman." Come, we"ll have to hurry!"
Percival, with his pa.s.sion once more arrested, strode after her furiously. He was intolerant of every moment that pa.s.sed before be claimed her for his own, and unable longer to restrain his mad desire to fold her in his arms.
In the midst of these fervent antic.i.p.ations he was unpleasantly aware of the increased motion of the ship. It was the first time he had felt that pitching, rolling motion since leaving the Golden Gate, and he shuddered involuntarily.
"Here"s a cozy little corner all to ourselves!" cried Bobby, tossing the cushions into a nook in the music-room, and inviting him to a place beside her.
But Percival remained standing in the doorway, supporting himself with his free hand, his eyes fixed on s.p.a.ce, and a leaden color spreading over his face.
"If you don"t mind," he said slowly, "I think I"ll go below. Feel the storm a bit in my head. Atmospheric pressure, you know."
"Of course you do," cried Bobby, all solicitude. "It"s no wonder, after the blood you lost last night. Sit right down there until I find Judson."
XV
PERCIVAL RISES TO AN OCCASION
During the two nights and days that followed the typhoon had everything its own way. The sea bellowed with rage, and battalion after battalion of mountainous waves charged the ship, only to fall back and form again.
For thirty consecutive hours the captain stayed on the bridge watching every variation in the gla.s.s, and keeping all of his Nelson features in active service. Whatever frivolities might fill his idle hours, there was no question of his attention to duty when the call came.
As for the Honorable Percival, he had ample opportunity during his long hours of solitary confinement to make a complete inventory of his varied emotions. Two things which should never be interrupted are a sneeze and a proposal. That second declaration, so ardently begun and so ruthlessly arrested, still hung in mid-air, and lying on his back in his darkened stateroom, he had ample time in which to survey it from every angle.
Never for a moment did he question the undying nature of his affection for Bobby. His emotion was too insistent and too consuming to be doubted. It was the proprieties that he questioned, and they all shook emphatic and disapproving heads. The proprieties in Grosvenor Square, to be sure, loomed rather dim through the distance; but that immediate propriety in Hong-Kong, toward whom he was speeding with every turn of the screw, towered ominously.
If only he could hold things in abeyance until after the _Saluria_ sailed from Hong-Kong, all might be well. It was of the utmost importance that he should not present Bobby to Sister Cordelia until the die was irrevocably cast. Faults that in Miss Boynton of the Big Gully Ranch would be glaring iniquities would, in the wife of the Honorable Percival Has...o...b.., dwindle away to charming eccentricities.
A daring plan occurred to him. With proper strategy he might go down to see the steamer off, get left on board, have the return trip in uninterrupted bliss with Bobby, then boldly cable from America that he had met his fate and succ.u.mbed to it, and that remonstrances were useless. The scheme appealed to him the more he considered it.
Cablegrams were necessarily unemotional, and by the time letters were exchanged, the proprieties would probably have decided to accept the will of Providence and try to make the best of dear Percy"s strange choice of an unknown American girl.
In the meanwhile he would devote all his energies to fitting her for the honor about to be conferred upon her, For he had quite given up the idea of the "blossomed bower in dark purple spheres of sea," and had definitely decided to take her back to England as the future mistress of Has...o...b.. Hall. All he asked was six months in which to cut and polish his priceless gem.
It was not until the evening before the _Saluria_ was due in Hong-Kong that the sea got over its fit of temper and decided to make that last night the most beautiful one of the crossing. Everybody was down for the farewell dinner. Even those who had been invisible for two days emerged from their state-rooms like gorgeous b.u.t.terflies from their coc.o.o.ns. Speeches were made, toasts were drunk, and a general air of festivity prevailed.
Percival raged inwardly at the length of the dinner. The golden moments were racing by, and he was in a fever to get Bobby away to himself, he had decided on a course which he felt did credit to his power of self-control. He would permit himself the luxury of showing her that her affection for him was wholly returned, without in any way committing himself to a definite engagement. He would, in short, ask her to accept a sort of promissory note on his affections, to be presented at any time after the steamer left Hong-Kong.
It was ten o"clock before he contrived, to escape Mrs. Weston"s vigilant eye and whisk Bobby off to a certain favored nook on the boat-deck just outside the captain"s state-room. Here they had spent many happy evenings, notwithstanding the fact that their figures, silhouetted against the light, had never failed to provoke the captain to a profanity that was not always inaudible.
To-night, however, the captain was detained below, and they had the entire Yellow Sea to themselves as they sat on a projecting ledge and leaned their elbows comfortably on the rail.
It was an enticing night, with nothing left of the recent storm save a subtle thrill that still lingered in wind and wave. Overhead spread a canopy of luminous, subtropical stars; in undisturbed silence they gazed up at their brilliance. From below floated faint strains of music mingling with the sound of rippling: water.
"And to think it"s our very last night!" murmured Bobby, her chin on her palm. "I"ll never bear "La Paloma" that I sha"n"t think of this trip and of you."
Percival dared not answer. He had reached that stage when, according to the philosopher, the moonlight is a pleasing fever, the stars are letters, the flowers ciphers, and the air is coined into song. He regarded her gaze as she bent it upon the stars as the most exquisitely pensive thing he had ever behold.
"My! but there are some dandy billiard-shots up there!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Do you see that lovely carom over there beyond the Dipper?"
"I am not thinking of caroms," he said impatiently, "I am thinking of you."
"What have I done now?" she asked indignantly.
"You"ve made me forget that there"s anything else in the whole universe but just you!"
"And now you"ve got to begin to remember," said Bobby, sympathetically.
He searched her face for a clue as to what was pa.s.sing in her mind, but he found none.
"You are a most awfully baffling girl," he said. "Sometimes I can"t determine whether you are subtle or merely ingenuous."
"I"d give it up," advised Bobby.
"But I sha"n"t give it up. I sha"n"t be content until I know every little corner of your mind and heart."
She stirred uneasily. From, the way he was looking at her it was evidently a good thing that his near arm was in a sling.
"You need a cigar," she said soothingly. "Get one out; I"ll light it for you."