The Honorable Percival by Alice Hegan Rice

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"Isn't there a--a--Mrs. Ford on the ranch?" he asked by way of
prolonging the interview.

"Not now. Dear Aunt Kitty died four years ago. That was when they sent
me in to Cheyenne to school. But I'm finished now, and I'm going to stay
on the ranch and take care of Pa Joe and the boys."

"Can't say it sounds exciting. How many children are there?"

"Children! Why, they are all as tall as you are, except Piffles. There's
Ted, and Dick, and Piffles, and--Hal. I guess you saw Hal that day at
the station."

For the first time since he had known her, her black lashes drooped
consciously over her blue eyes. They were very long and thick lashes,
and as they swept her flushed cheek, Percival not only forgot what she
was saying, but went so far as to forget himself.

"I saw only one thing that day at the station," he said, with such an
ardent look that it made Bobby smile through her tears. As a rule he
disliked dimples, especially the stationary kind. But the one that now
occupied, his attention was a very shy and elusive affair that kept the
beholder watching very closely for fear he should miss it.

"Come," he said, taking advantage of the momentary sunshine, "you are a
bit of a sportsman, you know. You mustn't come off by yourself and cry
like this. Makes you feel so beastly seedy afterward, doesn't it?"

"Yes. But you don't understand. I want to do something that the
captain's perfectly determined I sha'n't do. He didn't bring me on this
trip just to give me a good time. Not on your life! He brought me to
make me forget."

"Oh, that's the game, is it? Scuttling you off to sea to make you
forget. Deuced interesting! I don't mind telling you I'm in something of
the same sort of a hole myself."

"Really?" Her interest was roused instantly.

A mysterious change was taking place in their acquaintance. Bobby's
tears had in some unaccountable manner taken all the starch out of
Percival's manner.

"You mean," she went on, "that they are sending you off to keep you from
marrying some one they don't like?"

"Not exactly. I shouldn't put up with that for a moment, you know."

"Of course you wouldn't, because you are a man. But suppose you were
a girl, and your father was perfectly unreasonable. What would you do
then?"

"I'd drop the matter for a bit," advised Percival, at a venture. "Let
him think you didn't care a tuppeny. Pretend to be awfully keen about
something else, and, likely as not, he'll come round. Not a bad idea
that, by Jove! I've tried it."

"Do you think it would work?" asked Bobby, scanning his finely chiseled
profile as eagerly as if she were consulting the Delphic oracle.

"No harm in trying. Keep him on tenter-hooks, at any rate."

"Ship ahoy!" came in joyous tones from Andy Black as he rounded the
corner of the saloon, clinging to his cap. "Been looking for you all
over. Say, did you all know we were passing Bird Island?"

"If we don't," said Percival, with his most deliberate stare, "it is not
because we have failed to be informed of the uninteresting fact every
five minutes for the last half-hour."

"Consider me the third stanza," said Andy; "please omit me!"

Bobby laughed as he disappeared, and pushed back her tumbled hair.

"I love to hear you say 'hawf,'" she said; then she added impetuously,
"You aren't a bit like anybody I ever saw before."

"I dare say," said Percival, returning her smile.

"Not only your talk, but your walk, and the way you wear your clothes."

"I suppose my tailor does rather understand my figure," said Percival;
"but what puzzles you about my speech?"

"I don't know. It's different. And then I never can tell what you are
thinking about."

"Do you wish to know what I'm thinking about just now?"

"Yes."

"I am wondering why you wear high-heeled, gold-beaded slippers in the
morning."

Bobby thrust forth two dainty feet and contemplated them in surprise.

"What's wrong with them?" she asked.

"Rather dressy for the morning, aren't they?" he gently suggested.

"I don't know," she said good-humoredly. "I've got a trunkful of clothes
down in my state-room, but I never know which ones to put on. You see,
we never dike up like this on the ranch. When the captain brought me to
San Francisco, he handed me over to a woman at the hotel and told her to
rig me out for the trip."

"Did--did she buy your steamer-coat?" asked Percival.

Bobby's laugh rang out contagiously.

"Isn't it a tulip? I knew it was wrong the minute I came on board and
saw Elise Weston's. Honest, now, have I got anything else as bad as
that?"

"No, oh, no; I was a beastly cad to mention it. You are most awfully
charming in anything you choose to wear. But as a matter of fact, I do
like you best in white, with your hair low, as it is now."

"Hair low, shoes high, all in white. Anything else you'd like?" All
trace of tears had vanished, and her eyes were dancing audaciously.

"Yes," said Percival, leaning forward, "there is."

At this critical juncture a well-built figure in a uniform started down
the stairway above them, paused a moment unobserved, then quietly
retraced his steps to the bridge.

"See here, I must be going," said Bobby, rising abruptly. "I promised to
practise for the tableaux at ten, and it's half-past now. Say, you were
a brick to brace me up! I'm going to take your advice, too; you see if
I don't. May I count on your help!"

"At your service," said Percival, rising, and clasping the hand she held
out.

The captain's Chinese boy glided up unobserved and stood at attention.

"Captain say missy please come top-side right away. Wantchee see Bird
Island."

Percival, still holding her hand, smilingly shook his head.

"Damn Bird Island!" he murmured softly.

VII

THE DAY THAT NEVER WAS

Of all the places in the world where a flirtation can germinate, blossom,
and bear fruit overnight, an ocean-liner is the most propitious. Two
conventional human beings who in the city streets would pass each other
with utter indifference will often drop a conscious lid over a welcoming
eye when passing and repassing on the deck of a steamer. When men and
women are set adrift for four weeks, with thousands of miles of
sparkling water separating them from the past and the present, and with
nothing to do but observe one another, something usually happens.

The present voyage of the _Saluria_ was no exception; in fact, it
threatened to break all former records. The love-epidemic started in
the steerage, where a Dutch boy en route to Java developed a burning
attachment for a young stewardess, and it extended to the bridge, where
Captain Boynton frequently consigned his duties to the first officer
in order to devote his energies to holding Mrs. Weston's worsted. When
he was not holding the skein, he was holding the ball, and during
the endless process of winding and unwinding he spun his own yarns,
recalling tales of wild adventure that alternately shocked and
fascinated his gentle listener.

The young people, meanwhile, were not by any means immune. Elise Weston
had discovered that the Scotchman's voice blended perfectly with her
own, and through endless practising of "Tales from Hoffman" they had
arrived at a harmony that promised to be permanent. Andy Black and Bobby
Boynton romped through the days, apparently wasting little time on
sentiment, but developing a friendship that might at any time become
serious.

Only the blighted being wandered the decks alone. Since that morning in
the wind-shelter he had decided to take no more risks. Alarming symptoms
had not been wanting to indicate the return of a malady from which he
never expected to suffer again. The grand affair with the Lady Hortense
had been a dignified, chronic ailment which he had learned to endure
with a becoming air of pensive resignation. The present attack
threatened to be of a much more disturbing character. It was acute;
it responded to no treatment, mental, moral, or physical. It was like
toothache or mumps or chicken-pox, an ignoble, complaint of which one
is ashamed, but before which one is helpless.

It was only at table that he found it impossible to maintain toward
Bobby that attitude of indifference which he had prescribed for himself.
With the arrival of the new passengers at Honolulu the places had been
slightly changed, and now that he found himself seated between Bobby and
Andy Black, the temptation to turn his chair slightly toward the former,
thus presenting an insolent and forbidding back to Andy, was more than
he could resist. Moreover, it afforded him unlimited satisfaction to
know that by the glance of his eye or a whispered half-phrase he could
instantly center all her sparkling attention upon himself.

The captain viewed these elusive tete-a-tetes with growing disfavor. One
morning when he was alone at breakfast with Mrs. Weston he unburdened
his mind after his own peculiar fashion.

"A seaman has to cultivate three things, my lady, a Nelson eye, a Nelson
ear, and a Nelson nose. I've got 'em all."

Mrs. Weston smiled with, flattering expectancy.

"I don't claim to know what's going on in the rest of the world," he
continued significantly, "but you can back your Uncle Ik to know
everything that's happening on board this wagon."

"What's happening now? Do tell me," said Mrs. Weston, leaning forward
and almost upsetting the salt in her eagerness.

"An Englishman, a poisonously funny Englishman, is running out of his
course. He'll hit a reef before long that will knock a hole in his
hull."

"Oh, you mean the Honorable Percival?"

"I do. And if he's like the majority of those titled Johnnies, he's so
crooked he can hide behind a corkscrew."

"O Captain, that's absurd! Why, he is one of the most absolutely
irreproachable and unapproachable young aristocrats I ever saw."

"That's all right. I don't tie up to the British aristocracy, nor any
other foreign nobility. Besides, what headway will I make by steering
that girl of mine off one shoal to land her on another?"

"Was the Wyoming affair quite out of the question?"

"Oh, Hal Ford is a good-enough chap, but he's a perfect kid. They are
both too young to know what they want. Besides, I am not going to have
her drop anchor on a ranch for the rest of her days. I'll send her up to
'Frisco to school first. That's what the row was about before she left
home. The little minx defied me, so I picked her up and brought her with
me out to Hong-Kong."

"Poor child! She probably sees now that you were quite right."

"Maybe she does and maybe she doesn't. She's a wily little scamp all
right. I discovered that the second day out. I'd forbidden her to write
any letters to the ranch, so she was keeping a log-book which she was
going to mail at every port."

"And were you hard-hearted enough to confiscate it?"

"I was. At least I ordered her to give it to me on the spot, and she
said she'd chuck it overboard first."

"And did she!"

"She did," said the captain, with a grim chuckle.

"You don't understand that girl," said Mrs. Weston. "I'm quite sure
she'd be amenable if she were handled right. However, she doesn't seem
to be breaking her heart. Between Andy and the Honorable she's finding
consolation."

"Most women do," said the captain, with one of those flashes of
bitterness that sent all the good humor scurrying out of his face.

"Of course, she's just playing with Andy," Mrs. Weston hurried on,
fearful of the memories she had stirred; "but Mr. Hascombe is different.
He is so good-looking and so polished, almost any girl would have her
head turned a bit by his attentions."

"You don't mean to say that you think Bobby--"

"I can't quite make out. She doesn't seem to see much of him on deck,
but at the table she hasn't eyes or ears for any one else. You watch
her."

"Trust my Nelson eye!" said the captain.

When Antipodal Day arrived, every one felt called upon to celebrate it.
The guileless tried to see the imaginary line of the meridian which the
sophisticated pointed out to them on the water; the cream-peppermint
lady went so far as to say she felt the jar as the steamer passed over
it. Conjectures, witty, mathematical, or inane, were made as to the
identity of to-day, if yesterday was Friday and to-morrow going to be
Saturday.

During the morning Percival wandered disconsolately from one part of the
ship to another. Despite the fact that he was quite determined to keep
away from Bobby, he chafed under her seeming indifference. After that
intimate hour together in the wind-shelter it was strange that she could
be so oblivious of his presence. It was distasteful to him to have to
signal the train of her attention. To be sure, a very little signal
served,--a word, a look, a thoughtful gesture,--but he preferred a
homage that required no prompting. Moreover, she was guilty of "smiling
on all she looked upon," and her acceptance of Andy Black into the
ever-widening circle of her admirers offended him deeply.

The day dragged interminably. By five o'clock in the afternoon a
tango-tea was in progress, and it seemed to Percival that everybody on
board was dancing except the missionaries and himself. Even they were
taking part as spectators, having secured their places half an hour
before the appointed time in order not to miss a moment of the shocking
exhibition.

Percival went to the upper deck and sought the most secluded corner he
could find, but even there he was haunted by the soul-disturbing music.
Dancing was one of his accomplishments, and he had trod stately measures
through half a dozen London seasons, the admiration and the despair
of more than one aspiring mama. He looked with great disapproval upon
these new and boisterous American dances, he wondered if they were as
difficult as they looked. Seeing nobody about, he rose and tentatively
tried a few steps behind the shelter of a life-boat. He found it
interesting, and was getting quite pleased over his cleverness in
catching the syncopated time, when he spied an impertinent sailor
grinning at him from the rigging. Instantly his legs became rigid, and
he affected an interest in the horizon intended to convince the sailor
that he had been the victim of an optical illusion. Of course it was
quite beneath his dignity to take part in these rollicking dances,
especially in such a public place as on shipboard. He realized that
fully; yet he thought of Bobby and sighed. There were actually times in
his life when he almost wished he had been born in the middle class.

Then he drew himself up sharply. If there was one thing incumbent upon
the second son of the late Lord Westenhanger, it was that he maintain
his position. Though grievously disappointed in his failure to capture
the incomparable Lady Hortense, he must don his armor and ride forth
again to find another lady, differing in kind, perhaps, but not in
degree. In his scheme of things wild young daughters of American
sea-captains had no place whatever.

Yet even as he made this assertion he found himself moving toward the
companionway and down to the deck below.

"Will you sit out the next dance with me?" he heard himself murmuring to
Bobby over her partner's shoulder.

"You bet I will," said Bobby with a smile that made him forget the
awfulness of her language.

Ten minutes later they were leaning over the rail on the deserted
boat-deck, the wind full in their faces, watching the prow of the
steamer gently rise and fall as she sailed straight into the golden
heart of the sun. Up from the horizon spread wave after wave; of
perilous color, emerald melting into azure, crimson dying into rose.
There was just enough breeze to put a tiny feather on the windward slope
of the waves, and every white crest caught the glory.

"This is better than all the tangoing in the world," cried Bobby. "Have
you been up here all afternoon?"

"I have. You see, all those people below get rather on one's nerves."

"Do _I?_" she challenged him instantly.

"Not on one's nerves exactly," he said, thrillingly aware that her arm
was touching his on the railing and that the dangerous pink light was
playing over her face; "but I must say you do get on one's--one's mind!"

She laughed gaily.

"Well, that's next to having nothing on your mind. Say, you wouldn't
think I had the blues, would you?"

"Can't say I should."

"Well, I have. I've been so homesick all day that I could go round the
corner and cry if you--if you hadn't said I mustn't."

"What are you homesick for?"

"Oh, for the old ranch and the ponies and my dogs and--and lots of
things. See the way the wind flecks the water over there? Well, that's
just the way it does the grasslands back home."

"But it's such a parched, barren sort of a place, Wyoming."

"It is _not_. You ought to see it in the early spring, when
everything is vivid green, and the cactus is in bloom--the red-flowered
kind that looks so pretty against the sides of the gray buttes. Why, you
can gallop for miles with your horse's hoofs sinking into beds of
prairie roses!"

"But it's virtually green in England all the year round. I'd like to
show you a well-run English estate. Rather a pretty sight. Hascombe
Hall's a fairly decent example. Some hundreds of acres, don't you know."

"Some hundreds!" repeated Bobby, scornfully. "Our ranch covers two
hundred thousand acres, and it takes Pa Joe four days' hard riding to
get over it!"

"Oh, I say, most extraordinary! But if I were you, I wouldn't think
about home affairs," said Percival, to whom her background in Wyoming
was of no consequence. He liked to think of her as having begun to live
when she met him, and as gracefully ceasing to exist when they parted.

"All right," said Bobby, resignedly. "I've kept bottled up this long; I
suppose I can manage the rest of the time. What's that book you've been
reading?"

"Shelley."

"Is it a love-story?"

Percival winced.

"It is poetry," he said. "I shouldn't mind reading you a bit, if you
like."

She did like. She evidently liked tremendously. She listened as an
inquisitive bird might listen to a strange wood note, with her head on
one side and her bright eyes intent upon his face.

When Percival's perfectly modulated voice ceased, she sighed:

"I didn't understand a word of it," she said, "but I could listen to you
read forever. It makes me think of the wind in the trees, and all the
lovely things that ever happened to me."

"But don't you like the poem?"

[Illustration: "I like the way your mouth looks when you read it."]

"I like the way your mouth looks when you read it. Your chin's nice,
too, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Percival, with an unsuccessful effort at
indifference; "it's the Hascombe chin. Been in the family for
generations."

"Think of having a chin as old as that! Perhaps that's what makes you so
solemn."

"Am I solemn?"

"Awfully. Elise Weston says she believes you have been crossed in love."

The hollow chambers of Percival's heart reverberated with alarming
echoes. He shot a suspicious glance at Bobby, but her innocent gaze
reassured him.

"I am afraid your friend Miss Weston is romantic," he said stiffly. "Am
I keeping you too long from the dance?"

"Oh, no," said Bobby, comfortably. "I've got the next with Andy Black.
He'll never think to look up here. But are you quite sure I'm not
getting on your nerves?"

"I am quite sure you are a most awfully charming girl," Percival
exclaimed with sudden warmth. "As a matter of fact, I--I like you
tremendously."

"That's nice," said Bobby, "because, you see, I like you!"

There was no reason why her avowal should have been regarded as more
serious than his own. But he took alarm instantly.

"You won't mind my telling you a few things for your own good, will
you?" he asked, taking refuge in the safe role of mentor.

"Not a bit," said Bobby; "fire away."

She listened for five minutes to his dissertation on the impropriety of
young ladies playing poker in the smoking-room, then she became restive.

"Isn't it funny," she said by way of changing the subject, "that
yesterday was Friday, and to-morrow is going to be Saturday, and to-day
isn't anything?"

"But it _is_ something. It's a day I shall remember."

Percival was drifting again, and he knew it, but there was that in the
bewitching face upturned to his that demoralized him.

"No," said Bobby, "it's the day that never was. We just picked it up out
of the sea, and we are going to drop it back again. Whatever happens
to-day doesn't count."

"Why?"

"Because by to-morrow, you see, to-day never will have been."

"Deuced clever idea that, I call it. Never thought of it. Suppose we
celebrate by way of doing something that we wouldn't do if it counted."

Bobby clapped her hands. "What shall it be?"

"Well, suppose for the rest of the day you consider me the person you
quite like best in the world."

She considered it.

"All right. I don't mind for the rest of the day. And you promise to
forget all those girls over in England, and pretend that I am the nicest
girl you know?"

"I promise," said Percival.

When the second gong for dinner sounded, the two white-clad figures
were still leaning on the railing in the secluded angle made by two
life-boats. The color had gone from the sky, but every moment the
purpling waters were growing more vivid, more intense, more thrillingly
alive to the mystery of the coming night. The Honorable Percival's
cap was on Bobby's head, and his coat was about her shoulders. As to
himself, he seemed strangely indifferent to the tumbled state of his
wind-blown hair and the shocking informality of his shirt-sleeves.
It was quite evident that for the time being, at least, he had thrown
discretion to the winds, and was sailing away from his memories at the
rate of sixteen knots an hour.

That night at dinner the captain followed Mrs. Weston's advice and took
soundings. Nothing was lost upon him, from Bobby's late arrival in a
somewhat sophisticated white evening gown that she had hitherto scorned,
to the new and becoming way in which her hair was arranged. It did not
require a Nelson eye to discover a suppressed excitement under her high
spirits or to detect the side-play that was taking place between her and
the apparently stolid Englishman at her right.

Captain Boynton looked at Mrs. Weston and raised one eyebrow; she nodded
comprehendingly. Later in the evening, when he dropped into a
steamer-chair beside her, he asked if she had seen Bobby.

"Not since dinner. All the young people have been asking for her. Did
you look in the writing-room ?"

"I've looked everywhere except in the coal-bunkers," said the captain,
gruffly. "Talk to me about responsibility. I'd rather run a schooner up
the Hoogli than to steer that girl of mine."

"You've wakened to your duty rather late, haven't you!" asked Mrs.
Weston. "I suppose it's the Englishman who is making you anxious?"

The captain dropped his voice.

"Did you see the way she looked at him at dinner? By George! it was
enough to melt the leg off an iron pot!"

"It's been coming for a week," said Mrs. Weston, wisely. "If you really
oppose it, there is no time to be lost."

"Oppose it? Of course I oppose it. What's to be done?"

"The situation requires delicate handling. Would you like me to try and
help you out--share the responsibility of chaperoning her, I mean?"

"Permanently?" asked the captain, shooting a quizzical glance at her
from under his heavy brows.

"You wretch!" said Mrs. Weston, flushing. "Just to Hong-Kong, I mean."

That night about ten o'clock the captain, who happened to be crossing
the steerage deck, came quite unexpectedly upon Percival and Bobby
groping their way through the dark.

[Illustration: "Roberta!" he called sternly. "What are you doing out
here?"]

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

"Oh," cried Bobby, breathlessly, feeling her way around the hatch,
"we've been out on the prow for hours, and it was simply gorgeous.
All inky black except the phosphorescence, miles and miles of it! And
some dolphins, all covered with silver, kept racing with us and leaping
clear out of the water, like wriggly bits of fire. And the stars--why,
Mr. Hascombe's been telling me the most fascinating things I ever
heard about stars. We've had a perfectly wonderful time, haven't we,
Mr. Hascombe?"

"Topping!" said the Honorable Percival.

VIII

IN THE CROW'S-NEST

The sea-voyage of thirty days, which in the beginning had threatened
to stretch into eternity, now seemed to be racing into the past with a
swiftness that was incredible. To Percival the one desirable thing in
life had come to be the sailing of the high seas under favoring winds,
in a big ship, with Bobby Boynton on board, and a conscience that had
agreed to remain quiescent until port was reached.

Not that Percival's conscience succumbed without a struggle; he had to
assure it repeatedly that he would refrain from rousing in Bobby any
hopes that might be realized. The moment she showed the slightest sign
of taking his attentions seriously he would kindly, but firmly, make her
understand. It would not be the first time he had had to do this. He
recalled several instances with sad complacency. But a man cannot always
be sacrificing himself. A mild flirtation, with a girl whom he never
expected to see again was surely a harmless way of consoling himself for
the harsh treatment he had recently received from another of her sex.

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