Part 8

Somehow they contrived to coax out music of a sort, and a few young men and girls were solemnly gyrating to it in a way to make you giddy even to watch. When a man thought he had had enough, or wanted to dance with another girl, he dropped his partner with alarming suddenness, bowed stiffly without smile or word, and left her plante la. It was evidently etiquette not to speak to your partner. At the end of a dance, the conductor with the lobster-claw nose looked up to our deck, bowing low with his hand on his heart, and then all the audience leaning over the rail began fumbling in their pockets if they were men, or opening their purses or gold bags if they were women. Down poured a shower of small silver and copper, little boys scrambling to pick it up, and hand it to the conductor, who would, Mrs. Van der Windt said, divide the money among the members of his quaint band.

I had a few shillings with me, and I'd been so much amused that I felt like being generous. Luckily, Mother couldn't see me, and scold! I took half a dozen coins--shillings and sixpences--and wrapping them hurriedly up in half the cover torn off a magazine I was reading, I aimed the little parcel to fall at the comic conductor's feet.

Generally I can throw fairly straight, for Stan took some pains with that part of my education when I was a small girl; but just at that instant someone standing next me moved, knocked me on the elbow, and spoilt my aim.

Instead of falling in front of Mr. Lobster-Claw, the parcel hit the ear of a very tall young man among the crowd below, who had been standing with his back to me. He turned quickly, not knowing what had happened, glanced up and caught my eyes, as I was looking down quite distressed.

I had noticed his figure in the crush, because he towered nearly a head over everyone else, and I had a dim impression that he had good shoulders; but seeing his face gave me a great surprise.

It was as different from all the rest of the steerage faces as day is from night, and somehow it gave me quite a shock that such a man should be among those others, as if something must be wrong with the world, or it could not happen. I had even a guilty sort of thrill, as if I had no right to be well-dressed and prosperous, staring at him and his companions as though they were a show which we others paid to see--daring to amuse ourselves with the hard, strange conditions of their lives.

I've heard Mother say that good blood is sure to prove itself; that a gentleman can't look like a common man, even in rags. Stan disputes that theory with her, when he isn't too lazy, and wants to bet he could so disguise himself that she would take him for a green grocer or a fishmonger, who have the air of being commoner than other men, I think--at least in our village at Battlemead--because they wear fat tufts of curls frothing out over their foreheads from under their caps, which are always plaid and made of cloth.

Anyway, if Mother is right, this man in the steerage must have the bluest of blood in his veins, for I never saw one with clearer, nobler features. And yet, he doesn't give the impression of a broken-down gentleman who has gone the pace and paid for it by stumbling into the depths. I thought, as he looked up straight into my face that first time, (and I think still) that no face could be finer or more manly than his. Brown--deep brown it is, like bronze, and clean-shaved (not rough and scrubby), with dark grey eyes (I knew at once they were grey because the light struck into them) rimmed with black lashes, so long you couldn't help noticing them; black eyebrows and hair short and sleek like Stan's, or any other well-groomed man one knows. Besides, commonness shows in people's mouths more than anywhere else; it's hard to define, but it's there; and this man's mouth is the best part of his face--unless it's the chin; or perhaps the nose, I'm not quite sure which, though I've thought a good deal about them all, because of the mystery of finding such a man in such an unsuitable place. It would be just the same if you saw a tall palm suddenly shooting up in the kitchen-garden, and couldn't find out how it had been planted there.

I'm afraid I must have shown how surprised I was, and admiring, too, maybe (how can one keep from admiring what is fine and noble, whether it's a strange person's face, or the profile of a mountain against a sky at sunset?) for the handsome steerage passenger looked at me a long, long instant as if he were as much astonished as I was; and yet with such a nice look, that instead of being annoyed, I couldn't help being pleased.

In the meantime the little packet of money had fallen on the deck; but though it had struck him from behind, he seemed to realise exactly what had happened, and stooping down, he picked it up. Then he raised his hand high, so that I could see he had the crumpled ball of paper in it; and edging his way determinedly but not at all roughly, through the crowd, he opened the parcel and gave the money to the conductor.

"What a splendid-looking man!" I said in a low voice to Mrs. Ess Kay. "Isn't it extraordinary that he should be in the steerage?"

"Come away, my dear child," she answered. "I can't have you standing here to be stared at by low creatures like that. The fellow's not in the least splendid-looking. He's only a big, hulking animal. Don't take to making up romances about the steerage passengers, my love. They're not worth bothering your little head about, because if they weren't born for that sort of thing, they wouldn't be there, I assure you."

I didn't say anything more, though I was vexed with her, both for being so stupidly conventional, and for speaking to me in such a loud tone that she attracted people's attention.

We went back to our deck-chairs, and there was nothing to remind me of the little episode except the torn cover of my magazine, on which, I now remembered, Sally Woodburn had scrawled my name over and over again in pencil, just in idleness, while she and I had been talking that morning. If Mrs. Ess Kay had known, no doubt she would have been furious that a piece of paper with my name on it should have gone down into the steerage. But I didn't mind, for I remembered that the young man had opened the parcel, given the money to the conductor, and kept the cover, which probably he had soon after thrown overboard, or twisted up to light a pipe.

Nothing more happened that day; but there are two nice American girls on board, about my own age or a little older (they seem years older, for they are so charming and self-possessed) and Mrs. Ess Kay encourages me to like them, as they are in Mrs. Van der Windt's party. I grew quite well acquainted with them the third day out, and they asked me to go and watch the people in the steerage, who had a little trick dog which was lots of fun. I went, and saw the bronze young man again. He was standing with his arms folded across his blue-flannel-shirted chest, leaning against one of the supports of a kind of bridge, looking up towards the first-class deck. Our eyes met as they had before, and I was so absurd that I felt myself blushing. I could have boxed my own ears; and though the trained dog really was a pet, I didn't stay long.

It is strange how certain kinds of eyes haunt one. You, see them in the air, as if they were really looking at you--especially when you are just dropping off to sleep. I think grey ones do this more than others. Perhaps it is because they are more piercing.

But it was on the fourth day that the climax came,--the climax which has ended by upsetting me so much, and has made everything so uncomfortable.

The weather was glorious--all blue and gold after a sulky, leaden day--and there was dancing down on the steerage deck again. Though it was so fine, the water was not smooth like a floor as it had been at first, but broken into indigo waves ruffled irregularly with silver lace and edged with shimmering pearl fringe.

The same performance was going on, down there on the crowded deck, that I'd seen the first day, and Sally Woodburn and I, who had been walking--counting the times we went round, to make two miles--stopped to glance at the show.

"There's that good-looking man Cousin Katherine classifies as a hulking animal," said Sally. "I must really consult the dictionary for a definition of the word 'hulking.' I don't know whether it's a verb or adjective, do you?"

"No, I don't," said I. "But whichever it is, I'm sure he doesn't or isn't. He's a gentleman, and something strange has happened or he wouldn't be there. I do think it's a shame. It must be horrible."

"Don't you think Cousin Katherine knows more about such persons than you?" asked Sally, and there was such a funny quaver in her voice that I turned to see what it meant. She was laughing, but whether at me or at Mrs. Ess Kay, or at the man with the Lobster-Claw nose, I couldn't tell; and before I could answer her question by asking another, something happened which put the whole conversation out of my mind.

The ship curtseyed to a wave of more importance than any that had gone before, then righted herself quickly. We slid a little, everybody who could catching hold of the rail or of some friend's arm, laughing; but down on the steerage deck there rose a cry which wasn't laughter.

"Child overboard!" someone screamed. And I realised with a horrid feeling like suffocation, that a tiny boy down below, who had climbed up on the rail to watch the dancing, was missing.

It was a woman who had screamed, and everything followed so quickly that my mind was confused, as if a whirlwind had rushed through it and blown all the impressions on top of one another, in a heap. There was a babel of voices on the steerage deck, more cries, and shouts, and screams, and people surged in a solid wave toward the rail to look over. But out of that wave sprang one figure separating itself from the other atoms; and then I heard myself give a cry, too, for the man who had been in my thoughts had thrown off his coat and vaulted over the rail into the sea.

"Jove! he'll be caught by the propeller!" I heard somebody near me say.

I turned sick. The thought of his life being crushed out while we all looked on, helpless, was awful. The sea was terrible enough in itself--the great, wide, merciless, blue water, which sparkled so coldly, and laughed in its power--but to be crunched up by the jaws of a monster--I shut my eyes, and couldn't open them until I heard men saying the strong wind to starboard might save him. I believe I must have been unconsciously praying, and my hands were clasped so tightly together that afterwards my fingers ached.

People on our deck made a rush towards the stern, on the port side, for the ship had been steaming so fast that already we were forging away from the child who had fallen and the man who had jumped after him. Sally and I were carried along with the rush. She seized me by the hand, but we didn't speak a word. If dear friends, instead of two strangers in a far remote sphere of life, had been in deadly danger, I don't think the sickness at my heart could have been worse. I would have given years if at that moment I could have had the magical power to stop the ship instantly, with one wave of my hand.