The Isle of Retribution/Chapter 6
VI
Mrs. Hardenworth had made it a point to go immediately to her stateroom, but at once she reappeared on deck. She seemed a trifle more erect, her gray eyes singularly wide open.
“Ned, dear, I wonder if that fellow made a mistake when he pointed out my stateroom,” she began rather stiffly. “I want to be sure I've got the right one that you meant for me”
“It's the one to the right,” Ned answered, somewhat unhappily. He followed her along the deck, indicating the room she and her daughter were to occupy. “Did you think he was slipping something over on you, taking a better one himself?”
“I didn't know. You can't ever tell about such men, Ned; you know that very well. Of course, if it is the one you intended for me, I'm only too delighted with it”
“It's really the best on the ship. It's not a big craft, you know; space is limited. I'm sorry it's so small and dark, and I suppose you've already missed the running water. I do hope it won't be too uncomfortable. Of course, you can have the one on the other side, but it's really inferior to this”
“That's the only other one? Ned, I want you to have the best one”
“I'm sorry to say I'm not going to have any. Miss Gilbert has to have the other. But there's a corking berth in the pilot house I'm going to occupy.”
“I'd never let Miss Gilbert have it!” The woman's eyes flashed. “I wouldn't hear of it—you putting yourself out for your servant. Why can't she occupy the berth in the pilot house”
“I don't mind at all. Really I don't. The girl couldn't be expected to sleep where there are men on watch all night.”
“It's a shame, just the same. Here she is going to have one of the two best staterooms all to herself.”
At once she returned to her room; but the little scene was not without results. In the first place it implanted a feeling of injury in Ned, whose habits of mind made him singularly open to suggestion; and in the second it left Mrs. Hardenworth with a distinct prejudice against Bess. She was in a decided ill-humor until tea time, when she again joined Ned and Lenore on the deck.
She was not able to resist the contagion of their own high spirits, and soon she was joining in their chat. Everything made for happiness to-day. The air was cool and bracing, the blue waters glittered in the sun, a quartering wind filled the sails of the Charon, and with the help of the auxiliary engines whisked her rollicking northward. None of the three could resist a growing elation, a holiday mood such as had lately come but rarely and which was wholly worth celebrating. Soon Ned excused himself, but reappeared at once with Ted Wynham's parting gift.
“It's a rare day,” he announced solemnly.
“And heavens! We haven't christened the ship!” Lenore added drolly.
“Children, children! Not yet a day out! But you mustn't overdo it, either of you!” Mrs. Hardenworth shook her finger to caution them. “Now, Ned, have the colored man bring three glasses and water. I'd prefer ginger ale with mine if you don't mind—I'm dreadfully old-fashioned in that regard.”
A moment later all three had watered their liquor to their taste, and were nodding the first “here's how!” Then they talked quietly, enjoying the first stir of the stimulant in their veins.
Through the glass window of the cabin whence she had gone to read a novel Bess watched that first imbibing with lively interest. It was her first opportunity to observe her social superiors in their moments of relaxation, and she didn't quite know what to make of it. It was not that she was wholly unfamiliar with drinking on the part of women. She had known unfortunate girls, now and again, who had been brought to desolation by this very thing, but she had always associated it with squalor and brutality rather than culture and luxury. And she was particularly impressed with the casual way these two beautiful women took down their staggering doses.
They didn't seem to know what whisky was. They drank it like so much water. Evidently they had little respect for the demon that dwells in such poisoned waters,—a respect that in her, because of her greater knowledge of life, was an innate fear. They were like children playing with matches. She felt at first an instinct to warn them, to tell them in that direction lay all that was terrible and deadly, but instantly she knew that such a course would only make her ridiculous in their eyes.
But Bess needn't have felt surprise. Their attitude was only reflective of the recklessness that had come to be the dominant spirit of her age,—at least among those classes from whom, because of their culture and sophistication, the nation could otherwise look for its finest ideals. She saw them take a second drink, and later, ostensibly hidden from Mrs. Hardenworth's eyes, Ned and Lenore have a sma' wee one together, around the corner of the pilot house.
With that third drink the little gathering on the deck began to have the proportions of a “party.” Of course, no one was drunk. Mrs. Hardenworth was an old spartan at holding her liquor; Lenore and Ned were merely stimulated and talkative.
The older woman concealed the bottle in her stateroom, but the effects of what had already been consumed did not at once pass away. Their recklessness increased: it became manifest, to some small degree, in speech. Once or twice Ned's quips were a shade off-color, but always rollicking laughter was the response: once Mrs. Hardenworth, half without thinking, turned a phrase in such a way that a questionable inference could hardly be avoided.
“Why, mama!” Lenore exclaimed, in mock amazement. “Thank heaven you've got the grace to blush.”
“You wicked old woman,” Ned followed up with pretended gravity. “What if our little needlewoman had heard you!”
In reality Bess Gilbert had overheard the remark, as well as some of Ned's quips that had preceded it, and had been almost unable to believe her ears. It was not that she was particularly ingenuous or innocent. As an employee in a great factory she had a knowledge of life beyond any that these two tenderly bred women could have hoped to gain. But always before she had associated such speech with ill-bred and vulgar people with whom she would not permit herself to associate, never with those who in their attitude and thought presumed to be infinitely her superior.
She was not lacking in good sense; so she gave no sign of having heard. She wondered, however, just how she would have received such sallies had she been properly a member of their party. Wholly independent, with a world of moral courage to support her convictions, she could not have joined in the laughter that followed, even to avoid being conspicuous. It would have been a situation of real embarrassment to her.
The conclusion that she came to was that her three months' journey on board the Charon would be beset with many complications.
She made the very sensible resolve to avoid Ned's society and that of his two guests just as much as possible. She saw at once they were not her kind of people; and only unpleasantness would result from her intercourse with them.
She couldn't explain the darkening of her mood that followed this resolve. Surely she did not lean on these three for her happiness: the journey itself offered enough in the way of adventure and pleasure. She anticipated hours of enjoyment with Knutsen, the Norse pilot and owner of the boat, with McNab, the freckled, sandy-haired first engineer, and with Forest, his young assistant. Yet the weight of unhappiness that descended upon her was only too real. She tried in vain to shake it off. A sensible, self-mastered girl, she hated to yield to an oppression that seemingly had its source in her imagination only.
Ned had seemed so fine, so cheery, so companionable the night he had taken her home, after the accident. Yet he was showing himself a weakling: she saw the signs of it too plainly to mistake. She saw him not only on a far different social plane from her own, but some way fallen in her respect. He was separated from her not only by the unstable barrier of caste but by the stone wall of standards. She knew life, this girl of the world of toil, and she seemed to know that all her half-glimpsed, intangible dreams had come to nothing.
And her decision to avoid the three aristocrats stood her in good stead before the night was done, saving her as bitter a moment as any that had oppressed her in all the steep path of her life. Just after the dinner call had sounded, Lenore, Ned, and Mrs. Hardenworth had had a momentous conference in the little dining saloon.
The issue was silly and trivial from the first; but even insignificant things assume dangerous proportions when heady liquor is dying in the veins. It had been too long since Mrs. Hardenworth had had her drinks. She was in a doubtful mood, querulous so far as her own assumption of good breeding would permit, ready to haggle over nothing. The three of them had come into the dining room together: none of the other occupants of the little schooner had yet put in an appearance.
“I see the table's set for four,” she began. “Who's the other place for—Captain Knutsen?”
“I'm afraid the captain has to mind his wheel. This isn't an oceanic liner. I suppose the place is set for Miss Gilbert.”
Watching the older woman's face, Ned discerned an almost imperceptible hardening of the lines that stretched from the nose to the corners of the lips. Likely he wouldn't have observed it at all except for the fact that he had now and then seen the same thing in Lenore, always when she was displeased.
“Miss Gilbert seems to fill the horizon. May I ask how many more there are in the crew?”
“Just McNab, Forest, and the cook. Both white men take turns at the wheel in open water.”
“That's three for each table, considering one of the men has to stay at the wheel. Why shouldn't one of these plates be removed?”
The woman spoke rather softly, but Ned did not mistake the fact that she was wholly in earnest. “I don't see why not,” he answered rather feebly. “Except, of course—they eat at irregular hours”
“Listen, Ned. Be sensible. When a seamstress comes to our house she doesn't eat at the table with us. Not at your house either. Perhaps you'd say that this was different, thrown together as we are on this little boat, but I don't see that it is different. I hope you won't mind my suggesting this thing to you. I've handled servants all my life—I know how to get along with them with the least degree of friction—and it's very easy to be too kind.”
Ned looked down, his manhood oozing out of him. “But she's a nice girl”
“I don't doubt that she is,” Lenore interrupted him. “That isn't the point. It isn't through any attempt to assert superiority that mama is saying what she is. You know we like to be alone, Ned; we don't want to have to include any one else in our conversation. We're a little trio here, and we don't need any one else. Tell the man to take away her plate.”
“Of course, if you prefer it.” Half ashamed of his reluctance, he called the negro and had the fourth plate removed. “Miss Gilbert will eat at the second table,” he explained. When the man had gone, Ned turned in appeal to Lenore. “She'll be here in a minute. What shall I tell her?”
“Just what you told the servant—that she is to wait for the second table. Ned, you might as well make it clear in the beginning, otherwise it will be a problem all through the trip. Wait till she comes in, then tell her.”
Ned agreed, and they waited for the sound of Bess's step on the stair. Mrs. Hardenworth's large lips were set in a hard line: Lenore had a curious, eager expectancy. Quietly Julius served the soup, wondering at the ways of his superiors, the whites, and the long seconds grew into the minutes. Still they did not see Bess's bright face at the door.
The soup cooled, and Mrs. Hardenworth began to grow impatient. The girl was certainly late in responding to the dinner call! And now, because she was fully aroused, she was no longer willing to accept that which would have constituted, a few minutes before, a pleasant way out of the difficulty,—the failure of the seamstress to put in an appearance. The victorious foe, at white heat, demands more than mere surrender. The two women, fully determined as to Ned's proper course, were not willing the matter should rest.
“Send for her,” Mrs. Hardenworth urged. “There's no reason you shouldn't get this done and out of the way to-night, so we won't have to be distressed about it again.” Her voice had a ring of conviction; there was no doubt that, in her own mind, she had fully justified this affront to Bess. “You've got to face it some time. Tell the man to ask her to come here—and then politely designate her for the second table. She's an employee of yours, you are in real command of the boat, and it's entirely right and proper.”
Wholly cowed, anxious to sustain the assumption of caste that their words had inferred, he called to the negro waiter. “Please tell Miss Gilbert to come here,” he ordered.
A wide grin cracking his cheeks, failing wholly to understand the real situation and assuming that “de boss” had relented in his purpose to exclude the seamstress from the first table, the colored man sped cheerfully away. Bess had already spoken kindly to him; Julius had deplored the order to remove her plate almost as a personal affront. And he failed to hear Ned's comment that might have revealed the situation in its true light.
“I suppose you're right,” he said weakly, after Julius had gone. “But I feel like a cad, just the same.”
Again they waited for the seamstress to come. The women were grim, forbidding. And in a moment they heard steps at the threshold.
But only Julius, his face beset with gloom, came through the opened door. “De lady say she 'stremely sorry,” he pronounced, bowing. “But she say she's already promised Mista McNab to eat with him!”