The Honorable Percival by Alice Hegan Rice

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THE HONORABLE PERCIVAL

[Illustration: Their boat had sailed]

THE HONORABLE PERCIVAL

BY ALICE HEGAN RICE

AUTHOR OF "MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH,"
"A ROMANCE OF BILLY-GOAT HILL," ETC.

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1914

* * * * *

Copyright, 1914, by THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1914, by MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE

* * * * *

_Published, October, 1914_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I A BLIGHTED BEING

II A COUNTER-IRRITANT

III CONVALESCENCE

IV COUNTER-CURRENTS

V STRANDED

VI IN THE WIND-SHELTER

VII THE DAY THAT NEVER WAS

VIII IN THE CROW'S-NEST

IX DRAGGING ANCHOR

X ON THE SEARCH

XI THE GYMKHANA

XII THE SONG OF THE SIREN

XIII PERCIVAL PROCRASTINATES

XIV NEPTUNE TAKES A HAND

XV PERCIVAL RISES TO AN OCCASION

XVI IN PORT

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Their boat had sailed

"Well, did you ever! Where did _you_ come from?"

Her hair, still damp, was hanging about her shoulders, and she carried
a bundle of bath-towels under her arm

"Mr. Hascombe!" she demanded breathlessly, "you'll take me out in the
surf-boat, won't you?"

At a break-neck speed towards the wharf

"I don't know what makes me so everlastingly silly!" she said fiercely
trying to swallow the rising sobs, "but he _won't_ understand!"

"I like the way your mouth looks when you read it"

"Roberta!" he called sternly. "What are you doing out here?"

"You will have to join the crowd," suggested Bobby when Percival
complained of not seeing her as often as he wished

"If you want to hold my hand, Mr. Hascombe, you are welcome to it"

He sat on a table swinging his feet in unison with a lot of other young
feet, while he sipped lemonade from the same glass as Bobby Boynton

"Isn't that the prettiest thing you ever saw?" she asked, glancing at
him over her shoulder

"It's quite worth while," he said, "getting a jab in the wrist, to have
you looking after me like this"

"I'm so sorry!" whispered Bobby, putting her arm impulsively around his
heaving shoulders

* * * * *

THE HONORABLE PERCIVAL

I

A BLIGHTED BEING

The Honorable Percival Hascombe came aboard the Pacific liner about
to sail from San Francisco, preceded by a fur coat, a gun-case, two
pigskin bags, a hat-box, and a valet. He was tall and slender, and
moved with an air of fastidious distinction. He wore a small mustache,
a monocle, and an expression of unutterable ennui. His costume consisted
of a smart tweed traveling-suit, with cap to match, white spats, and
a pair of binoculars swung across his shoulders. In his eyes was the
look, carefully maintained, of one who has sounded the depths of human
tragedy.

Since his advent into the world twenty-eight years before, he had
been made to feel but one responsibility. His elder brother, having
persistently refused to provide himself with a wife and heir, the duty
of perpetuating the family name fell upon him, Percival Hascombe, second
son of the late Earl of Westenhanger, of Hascombe Hall, fifth in descent
from the great Westenhanger whose marble effigy adorns the dullest and
most respectable cathedral in southern England.

From the time Percival had been able to cast a discriminating eye, his
adoring family had presented the feminine flowers of the country-side
for his inspection. One after another they had met with his grave
consideration and subsequent disapprobation. Fears had begun to be
entertained that he would follow in the solitary footsteps of his
bachelor brother, when Lady Hortense Vevay appeared on the scene.

Lady Hortense, with her mother, the Duchess of Dare, had come down
to Devon for the shooting one autumn, seeking rest after a strenuous
social season following her presentation at court. She had been there
less than a week when she bagged the biggest game in the neighborhood.
The explanation was obvious: the Lady Hortense had no faults to be
discovered. The closest inspection through two pairs of glasses,
Percival's and her own, failed to reveal a flaw. Her birth and position
were equal to his own; her beauty, if attenuated, was sufficient; while
her discriminating taste amounted to a virtue. The Honorable Percival
proffered his hand, and was accepted. Hascombe Hall rang with applause.

All might have been well had not mother and daughter been pressed to
seal the compact by a closer intimacy in a ten-days' visit at the hall.
The young people were allowed to bask uninterrupted in the light of each
other's perfections, and the result was disastrous. Two persons who have
achieved distinction as soloists do not take kindly to duets. A few days
after the Vevays' return to London, Lady Hortense wrote a perfectly
worded note, and asked to be released from the engagement.

The utterly preposterous fact that a Hascombe of Hascombe Hall had been
jilted was too amazing a circumstance to be concealed, and the county
buzzed with rumors. The Honorable Percival, whose pride had sustained
a compound fracture, set sail immediately for America. After a hurried
trip across the continent, he was embarking again, this time for
Hong-Kong, where a sympathetic married sister held out embracing arms,
and a promise of refuge from wagging tongues.

As he moved languidly down the deck and sank into the steamer-chair that
bore his name, he assured himself for the fortieth time since leaving
England that life bored him to tears. He had sounded its joys and its
sorrows, he had exhausted its thrills; it was like a scenic railway
over which he was compelled to ride after every detail had become
monotonously familiar. There was nothing more for him to learn about
life, nothing more for him to feel. At least that is what the Honorable
Percival thought. But when one reckons too confidently on having
exhausted the varieties of human experience, one is apt to get a jolt.

Carefully selecting a cigarette from a gold case, he struck a light,
and, after a whiff or two, lay back and, closing his eyes on the stir
and confusion, gave himself up to painful reflections. His shrunken
self-esteem, like a feathered thing exposed to wet weather, was
clamoring for a sunny spot in which to expand to natural proportions.
Had he been able to remain at home, the unending chorus of feminine
praise would soon have dried his draggled feathers and left him preening
himself contentedly in the comforting assurance that Lady Hortense was
in no way worthy of him. But being confronted thus suddenly with the
necessity of supplying his egotism with all its nourishment, he found
himself unequal to the task. Behind every consoling thought stalked that
totally incredible "No." He tortured his brain for possible reasons for
Hortense's deflection, but could find none. Detail by detail he reviewed
their acquaintance from the first time he had bowed over her fingers,
in Lord Carlton's hunting-lodge, to the moment he had touched his lips
to the same fingers in formal farewell on the terrace at Hascombe Hall.
It had been such a well-bred courtship from the start, so thoroughly
approved by both sides, so perfectly conducted throughout!

Then, following suddenly on this smooth course of events, came a series
of bumps that made Percival wince as he recalled them: protests,
evasions, humiliating questions on the part of the public, and then
ignominious flight. He shuddered as he thought of the dull, wet days on
the Atlantic and his hideous week in America. He had been in a perpetual
state of protest against everything from the hotel service to what he
termed the "crass vulgarity of the States."

There had been but one oasis in the desert of gloom through which he had
traveled, and that had been on his interminable trip across the
continent, when for ten brief minutes his blight had been lifted, and he
had caught a breath of the incense for which his soul hungered.

It was at a little station in Wyoming that he, a convalescent from love,
had for the first time in weeks managed to look up and take a bit of
amatory nourishment. He was standing alone on the rear platform of the
observation-car, arms on railing, watching with no interest whatever
the taking off of mail-bags. Suddenly within his line of vision came a
stalwart young chap and a girl, each astride a bronco. They drew rein at
the platform, cursorily scanned the waiting train, glanced at him, then
at each other, and, apparently without the slightest reason, burst into
unrestrained merriment. Percival continued to survey them calmly and
haughtily through his monocle. His first glance had revealed the fact
that the girl was strikingly pretty. Her lithe young body showed round
and comely in its khaki suit and brown leggings. Her black mane was
braided in two short, thick plaits with a dash of scarlet ribbons at the
ends. Blue eyes, full of daring, danced under the blackest of brows, and
the smile she flashed at her companion revealed a dimple of distracting
proportions.

As Percival gazed he was quite oblivious of the fact that the laugh
was at his expense. In fact, he accorded her darting glances a far
more flattering interpretation, and when her escort dismounted, and
disappeared within the station, he deliberately caught her eye and held
it. There was a touch of daring in her face and figure, an evident sense
of security in the fact that the train was already beginning to move. He
shifted his position from the end of the platform to the side next the
station, and she met the challenge by gathering up her reins and keeping
pace with the slow-moving train.

For a short distance road and track lay parallel, and as the train
slowly got under way, the bronco was put to a run. Side by side, not
ten feet apart, Percival and the girl moved abreast, their eyes keeping
company. He had never seen anything so vitally young and untrammeled
as she was. She rode superbly, like an Indian, leaning well forward,
gripping the bronco with her knees, with one hand grasping his mane.
Every muscle was tense with life, every nerve a-quiver with glee.
Before the young Englishman knew it, his own sluggish blood was stirring
in his veins through sympathy. Then the train began to gain upon her,
and throwing herself back in the saddle, she shook a vanquished head.
As Percival raised his cap she wheeled her horse, and, standing in the
stirrups, blew an audacious kiss from her finger-tips. The next instant
she was dashing away across the wide, bleak prairies, the only living
thing in sight, her scarlet ribbons a streak of color in the dull-gray
landscape.

Percival had taken heart of grace from that airy kiss. It stood to him
as a symbol that, though one of the sex had proved a deserter to his
standard, there were still volunteers. He treasured the incident as a
king treasures the homage of his humblest subject when rebellion is rife
in the kingdom. On such trifles often hang one's self-esteem.

When the stir and bustle on deck became so lively that he was no longer
able to indulge in introspection, he got up and indifferently joined the
moving throng. The warning had sounded for those going ashore, and the
numerous gangways were crowded. Passengers lined the promenade-deck,
shouting and waving to the crowd on the wharf below. From the
bridge-deck the captain could be heard cheerfully swearing through a
megaphone at the second officer below. Chinese deck-stewards glided
about in their felt slippers, trying to attach the right person to the
right steamer-chair. Cabin-boys scurried about with baskets of fruit and
flowers and other sea-going impedimenta that, after one appreciative
glance from the recipient, are usually consigned to the ice-box. All
was noise and confusion.

Percival's critical eye swept the line of human backs that presented
themselves at the railing. The same old types! He could describe them
with his eyes shut: the conventional globe-trotters, avid to obtain and
to impart information; business men comparing statistics and endlessly
discussing the tariff; rich wanderers in quest of health; poor
missionaries in quest of "foreign fields"; fussy Frenchmen; stolid
Germans; a few suspicious-looking Englishmen; and always the ubiquitous
Americans, who had the same effect upon him that a highly colored cloth
has on the delicate sensibilities of a certain large animal.

The most conspicuous example of the last class was a somewhat noisy
young person in a still more resonant steamer-coat who hung at an angle
of forty-five degrees over the railing, and exchanged confidences of a
personal nature with an old man on the wharf twenty feet below. Every
time Percival's walk brought him toward the bow of the boat, his eyes
were offended by that blue-and-lavender steamer-coat and by a pair of
beaded-leather slippers with three straps across the instep and absurdly
high French heels. Could any one but an American, he soliloquized, be
guilty of starting on a journey in such a costume?

The prospect of being imprisoned between decks for four weeks, with
this heterogeneous collection appalled him. His only safety lay in
maintaining a rigid and uncompromising aloofness. He would discourage
all advances from the start, he would promptly nip in the bud the first
sign of intrusion. He had left the only country an Englishman regards as
the proper place for existence, to cross two abominable seas and an even
more abominable continent, for the sole purpose of privacy, and privacy
he meant to have at all costs.

As the _Saluria_ weighed anchor and steamed out of the Golden Gate,
he went below to see that his valet had made satisfactory disposition of
his varied belongings. His state-room was at the end of a short passage
leading from the main, one, and he was displeased at finding the deep
ledge under the passage window completely filled with flowers and fruit
that evidently belonged to some one occupying a room in the same passage.

He rang for the cabin-boy.

"Remove that greengrocer's shop!" he commanded peremptorily. "It is
abominably stuffy down here. We can't have the port-holes filled up like
that, you know."

The bland face of the young Chinaman assumed an expression of mild
inquiry.

"Take away!" ordered Percival, resorting to gesture.

"No can," said the boy, calmly. "All same b'long one missy. Missy b'long
cap'n."

Percival turned impatiently to his valet, who was coming through the
passage.

"Judson, get those things out of the window, and keep them out. Do you
hear?"

"Yes, sir. But where shall I put them, sir?"

"On the floor--in the sea--wherever you like," said Percival, as he
slipped his arms into the top-coat that was being respectfully held
for him.

Once again on deck, he found that the wind had acquired a sudden edge.
The short chop of the waves and scudding of gray clouds indicated that
the customary bit of rough weather after leaving the Golden Gate was to
be expected. Percival was not happy in rough weather. He attributed it
to extreme sensitiveness to atmospheric conditions. Whatever the cause,
the result remained that he was not happy.

The motion of the vessel made him pause a moment. The casual observer
would have said he stopped to cast an experienced eye on a sky that
could not deceive him; but the casual observer does not always know.
It is a long distance between the prow and the stern of an ocean liner,
when the deck is composed of alternating mountains and valleys that one
has to climb and descend. Percival found it decidedly hard going before
he reached his steamer-chair.

When he did so, he encountered a sight that filled him with chagrin.
Wrapped in the folds of his rug was that obnoxious blue-and-lavender
steamer-coat, with its owner snugly ensconced within, her eyes closed,
and her cheek brazenly reposing on the Hascombe crest that adorned the
pillow under her head!

Percival paused, irresolute, and his nostrils quivered. He wanted
very much to sit down, and he was unwilling to occupy any other
steamer-chair, for fear its owner might claim it. There was nothing left
for him but to pace up and down that undulating deck until the young
person opened her eyes and discovered, by glances which he would render
unmistakable, that she was trespassing.

When his third round brought him in front of her, and he saw that she
was awake, he carefully adjusted his monocle, and turned upon her a look
that was not unfamiliar to certain menials in the employ of Hascombe
Hall.

But no withering blight followed his look. Instead, the wearer of the
gaudy coat sat up suddenly and said, with a radiant smile:

"Well, did you ever! Where did _you_ come from?"

[Illustration: "Well, did you ever! Where did _you_ come from?"]

By a curious twist, his mind suddenly beheld a rolling prairie in place
of the tumbling sea, and a comely figure in khaki and brown leggings in
place of the muffled form in the hideous coat. His suspicion was
confirmed when he met the frank gaze of the bluest eyes that ever held a
challenge.

Instead of being amused, Percival was profoundly annoyed. The incident
on the train had been pretty enough in its way, but it was closed. As it
stood, it had been rather artistic and satisfying. A wild, unknown bit
of femininity dashing into his life for ten throbbing minutes, then
vanishing into the sunset, was one thing, and this very tangible young
person in clothes of the wrong cut and color, addressing him in terms of
easy familiarity, was quite another.

"I beg your pardon," he said stiffly. "Did you address me?"

Her eyes clouded.

"Why, I thought--I thought you were some one I knew. Is this your chair?"

"It is. Pray do not discommode yourself?"

"That is all right," she answered, trying to disentangle her high heels
from his rug. "I've had my nap, thank you. Think I'll go down and get a
sandwich."

Percival waited in frigid silence until she had departed; then he sank
limply into the warm nest she had just left, and closed his eyes on a
world that failed in all respects to give satisfaction.

II

A COUNTER-IRRITANT

If there is a place on earth where one meets with the present face
to face, it is on shipboard. Whether salt water and sea air act as a
narcotic on memories of the past and dreams of the future has never been
proved, but it is undeniably true that at sea time becomes a static
thing and concerns itself solely with the affairs of the moment.

During that first long afternoon Percival slept; and if the faithless
Hortense essayed to haunt his dreams, she was drowned in the profundity
of his slumber. It was not until his valet touched his arm and
respectfully submitted the information that the first gong had sounded
for dinner that he woke to the fact that the _Saluria_ was still
swinging from the trough to the summit of increasingly high waves and
that the deck was virtually deserted.

"If you are not feeling quite the thing, sir," said the valet,
solicitously, "shall I serve your dinner on deck, sir?"

Instantly Percival rose.

"By no means," he said coldly. "Get me a sherry and bitters. I'll dress
at once."

Proud indifference to every passing sensation was manifest in each
detail of his careful toilet when he took his place at the captain's
table some twenty minutes later. With a haughty inclination of the head,
he seated himself and, apparently unaware of the glances cast upon him,
devoted himself to an absorbed perusal of the menu. He was quite used to
being looked at; in fact, he suffered the admiration of the public with
noble tolerance: only it must keep its distance; he could have no
presuming.

On his arrival the conversation suffered a sudden chill; but the
captain, who knew the signs of approaching icebergs, soon steered the
talk back into warm waters. It was evident that the captain was in the
habit of occupying the center of the stage, a fact which should have
gratified Percival, inasmuch as it focused attention at the far end
of the table. Strange to say, he was not gratified. He conceived an
immediate dislike for the large, good-looking officer, who seemed built
especially to show off his smart uniform, and who brazenly ignored all
conventions save those of navigation, His peculiarities of speech, which
at another time might have gratified Percival and confirmed the report
he was bearing back to England that Americans were, if possible, more
obnoxious at home than abroad, now jarred upon him grievously. He found
it difficult to follow the story that was causing the present merriment.

"And when my Nelson eye discovered," the captain was concluding, "that
Ah Foo was perambulating an affair in Shanghai, I summoned the slave and
asked him if his mind was set on becoming festooned in matrimony. He
thought it was. So I up and bought the damsel for him, paid one hundred
Mex. for her, and, if you'll believe me, haven't had a dime's worth of
work out of Ah Foo since!"

Percival found himself on the dry beach of non-comprehension when the
tide of laughter followed the receding story,

"A cup of very strong tea and dry toast," he said over his shoulder to
the waiting Chinaman.

As his eyes returned to the study of the menu, he was for the first time
aware that the objectionable young person, with a glitter of rhinestones
in her hair, was sitting next the captain, giving him story for story,
and laughing much more than the occasion seemed to Percival to warrant.
He particularly disliked to hear a woman laugh aloud in public, and he
was vexed with himself that he looked up every time her laugh rang out.
To be sure, she was well worth looking at. Despite the clashing colors
of her costume, he could not deny the charm of her blue eyes and black
hair, and of the red lips whose only fault was that they smiled too
much. It was her dress, her freedom, her unrestrained gaiety that
offended Percival. In England a girl of her age would still be a
trembling bud, modestly hiding behind a mass of elderly foliage.

The absence of a chaperon puzzled him. The two other women at the table,
a Mrs. Weston and her daughter, had evidently just met her, and the
captain seemed to be the only one who had known her before. He called
her "Bobby," and treated her with the easy familiarity of a big brother.

"Don't talk to me about Wyoming!" he was saying now, in answer to some
boast of hers. "Anybody can have it that wants it. I make 'em a present
of it, with Dakota thrown in. You remember, Bobby, the last time I was
at the ranch? All hands on deck at two bells in the morning watch, a
twenty-mile sail on a bucking bronco, then back to the ranch, where we
shipped a cargo of food that would sink a tramp, A gallon or so of soup
in the hold, a saddle of venison, a broiled antelope, and six vegetables
in the forward hatchway, with three kinds of pie in the bunkers. It was
a regular food jag three times a day. It took me just two weeks at sea
to get over those two days on land."

Percival stirred uneasily. His tea and toast were long in coming, and a
certain haunted look was dawning on his face. Through the port-holes he
could see the deep-purple sky rising to give place to still deeper-purple
sea as the ship rose with sickening regularity. He took an olive.

"Isn't there a good deal of motion?" asked Mrs. Weston, a delicate,
appealing blonde, whose opinions were always tentative until they
received the stamp of masculine approval.

"Motion!" thundered the captain, bringing down a huge tattooed fist on
the table. "Isn't that like a woman? When I have ordered this calm
weather especially for Mrs. Weston's benefit! I've a good mind to
whistle for a hurricane."

"No, no, please!" she protested in mock terror.

Percival turned away from the foolish chatter. Matters of a deep and
sinister nature occupied his mind. He felt within him wars and rumors of
wars. He wished that the curtains would stop swinging out from the wall
in that silly fashion. It was deuced uncanny to see them hang at an
angle of twenty-five degrees, then slowly and mysteriously fall back
into their places. He tried not to watch them, but it was even more
dangerous to look at the man next him breaking soft-boiled eggs into a
glass tumbler. He took another olive.

An electric fan overhead whirred incessantly, and the bright, flashing
blades smote his eyes with diabolical precision. The circular motion,
instead of cooling him, brought beads of perspiration to his brow.

"Who'll have some Chinese chow?" asked the captain. "I always order a
dish or two the first night out. Can't give you any birds'-nest soup--"

A violent shudder passed over Percival, and he made a lightning
calculation of the distance from the table to the stairway. In doing so
he noted that it was a spiral stairway. Why in the name of heaven was
everything round? The port-holes, the revolving-chairs, the electric
fans, the plates, the olives--

At the thought of olives, all the pent-up possibilities became imminent
certainties. He rose dizzily, collided with the Chinaman bringing his
tea, and made blindly for the stairs. Half-way up, he staggered; each
step rose to meet him, then fell away from his foot the moment he
touched it. He grasped the baluster-rail, and stood wildly clinging,
like a shipwrecked sailor to a mast. He was dazed, dumb, paralyzed with
fear of the inevitable, and aware only of the burst of uncontrollable
laughter that had followed his abrupt retreat. Somebody from above held
out a succoring hand, at which he grasped frantically. Stumbling, half
blind, this unfortunate victim to atmospheric conditions was guided up
the remaining stops and out on deck, where he was anchored to the
railing and kindly left to his fate.

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