"C Q", or, In the Wireless House/Chapter 13
XIII
In which many persons are surprised
THE barometer had been falling steadily all the afternoon. But nothing could lower the mercury of Captain Ponsonby’s good humor. By gad! He ’d made a hit! His name would be on the front pages of the papers that the pilot would bring on board to-morrow afternoon. So he had ordered half a dozen of those shilling cigars from the smoking-room and was making a day of it. Now as he strode up and down on the bridge, still smoking, the fact that a northeast storm was on its way did not worry him in the least, although he knew that from every direction other vessels were drawing nearer and nearer and that the Pavonia was in the direct course of the eastward bound steamers on the southern route.
“Going to be a wet night, Simmons!” he growled.
“Yes, sir,—we ought to be passing the Saxonia about nine o’clock. She left New York at ten this morning,” replied the second officer.
“We ’ve made s successful run—all things considered,” continued the Captain, who had Chilvers in his mind.
“Very fair, sir,” answered the other, a spare, wiry little man who loathed Ponsonby.
“Ought to pick up Fire Island by eight o’clock to-morrow night,” went on the other.
“And probably take on the pilot by five,” nodded Simmons, furious because the Captain had n’t had the simple, ordinary decency to offer him a cigar.
“I suppose they ’ll come down and take off Chilvers in a tug,” mused Ponsonby, thus adroitly luring the conversation in the direction of his coup.
“Very likely,” assented the other dryly. He had heard nothing but Chilvers—Chilvers—Chilvers for a week, and he was sick of him and of his captor.
“Well,—I ’m afraid it will make a great talk in the papers,” meditated the Captain. “Yellow press is hungry for this sort of thing. By the way, how is the man? You must be careful and not let him jump overboard or find a piece of rope or a knife—those fellows are very apt to do away with themselves.”
“No danger, sir,” responded Simmons. “Everything of that sort has been removed from his state-room, and I have one man outside his window and another on guard at the door.”
“Yes—we must deliver him alive,” went on Ponsonby, as if Chilvers were a wild animal destined for a zoological park. “It would never do to lose him!”
“No, sir,” said Simmons. “It ’s beginning to rain,” he added.
It was the same advance gust of drops that had driven Mrs. Trevelyan into her cabin. As the light had died out of the west an army of clouds had arisen to the north and east and was now sweeping down upon the ship, bearing in its wake a solid bank of fog. The Captain stepped to the speaking tube and ordered Binks to bring up his rubber coat.
“I ’ll take this watch, Simmons,” he said gruffly. He had no inclination to sit at the same table with Mrs. Hubert Trevelyan during another long ship’s dinner. His dignity would not allow it. The woman had deliberately attempted to make small of him—him, a senior captain of the Cunard Line! He ’d not compliment her by his presence. She could continue to get on without him and see how she liked it. Then at the conclusion of the voyage he would magnanimously and very formally bid her adieu. It rankled in his bosom that he had picked the wrong man and that she had told him so. That was bad enough, but for this woman—no matter how handsome she was—to try to mix him up and jolly him in that fashion—ugh! Captain Ponsonby, slightly conscious of a congenital Incapacity to understand what the devil she had been up to, felt both chagrined and insulted. Well, they had the chap anyway, safe and alive. No, Mrs. Hubert Trevelyan could eat alone with that fool Ashurst.
The steamer met the advancing fog bank and in a moment her search-light was trying unsuccessfully to bore a red-rimmed yellow hole through it.
“Slow her down!” ordered Ponsonby. “The ’’Saxonia’’ may be around here somewhere.”
The young officer on duty rang down to the engine room and instantly the great liner ceased her straining and swept almost noiselessly through the fog,—which came swirling in over her bow. At about the same instant the rain rattled down upon the bridge in volleys of icy drops.
“My gad!” exclaimed Ponsonby, spitting out a limp and dripping shilling cigar. “This is wet.”
Darkness, black, dense, impenetrable, had come with the fog, and the search-light striking against that barrier of mist and rain was thrown back and upward at arm’s length, as if a burglar’s lantern were reflected from a wall.
“Let go the whistle every ten minutes,” called down the Captain through the speaking tube, and in another moment the ship trembled to the hoarse vibration of the fog horn.
Then Ponsonby, his glistening purple face stinging with the cutting rain, his eyes burrowing fiercely into the black night, his red ears listening for every sound above the seething of the waves and the lashing of the storm, unconcernedly minding his own regular business as well as he knew how, rose in stature from be-ing a ponderous ass into a high and efficient type of man, to whom be should be glad to trust our lives.
Meantime, Lily Trevelyan had intended with the assistance of Fantlne to complete une grande toilette—her challenge to the flat-chested maiden ladies of whose acerbity she had been so unfortunately a victim, as she sat on deck. Her dressing-room blazed with electricity—in sharp contrast to the blackness outside. Her bath, gently lapping the porcelain edges of the tub (as the Pavonia began to throw up her nose against the storm) was faintly scented with rose water. Diaphanous linen things as soft as silk and as thin lay in lacy piles on a wicker chair. A huge gold powder puff box was open upon the dresser. A pair of chamois slippers edged with fur had been placed conveniently by the bath. Two soft, thick towels hung from the glass rod with a dozen embroidered linen ones. And across the brass bed had been carefully laid out the Paquin foulard dress with the chiffon trimming—that is, if dress it could properly be called, since it resembled rather a sort of skirt with a couple of loops and a handful of gauze above.
All of the apparel which this full grown and round-limbed woman needed to cover herself and keep her warm could have been crammed into a man's overcoat pocket—or nearly so. It is the cause of perpetual amazement, this superiority of the female over the male in her ability to go through life with a minimum of clothing and a maximum of expense. Every one of us—I refer of course to my masculine readers, who alone are interested in Mrs. Trevelyan’s boudoir—would have been wearing under the same circumstances several thick layers of wool and a shirt as heavy and impenetrable as a steel breastplate. Some day, if she lives long enough, Lily Trevelyun may be wearing the same things, but when she does, although she may be able to vote, her power will be gone.
“What a horrid night!” she cried, irritably, swinging to the door with a bang that made the lights flicker in their sockets. “Fantine| Do you see any lines under my eyes?”
“Mais, non! Madame!” expostulated the maid, as she deftly removed her mistress’s coat and hat.
“I know you ’re lying to me!” she answered, throwing herself into the armchair before the mirror. “I ’m getting old!—and tired!”
“Madame!" cried Fantine. “You look but twenty! There is no one like you. But your bath is ready. Madame will dress?”
In the glass Lily saw the dragged look on her face that now came there so often. Any over-exertion, any nervousness or anxiety, any slight indisposition, might bring it—the dawn of old age. Five years ago, she thought, I could do anything! And now! She turned away gloomily.
“I ’ll show them!” she cried angrily. “I ’ll show them whether I ’m an old woman or not!”
And in a moment more a gentle plashing in the next room told Fantine that her mistress was in her bath.