The idea of the trip at once appealed strongly to Grace. Enthusiastically she declared that she would like nothing better. It would be so novel and exciting, quite unlike any experience she had yet had. Some friends who had already made the trip gave glowing accounts of their travels, and the more she thought of it the more decided she was that around the world she would go. This decided it, for when once Grace made up her mind, everything was as good as settled. Nothing her father or mother might say could deter her from the project. She pleaded that the trip was absolutely necessary, not only for her health, but as a finishing touch to her education. The ship was not only going to China, Japan, India, and Egypt. It would visit also many out-of-the-way islands which are practically inaccessible to the usual tourist and seldom if ever visited. As a lesson in geography alone it was worth the money. Harmon père did not mind the expense. The few thousands the trip would cost was a bagatelle to the man of millions. What he balked at was the idea of losing his cherished daughter for six long months. The uncertainties of Wall Street made it impossible for him to accompany her, and Mrs. Harmon suffered so horribly from seasickness that she threw up her hands at the very suggestion. Seizing the excuse that a young girl could not go unaccompanied, her father, for the first time in his recollection, asserted his authority, emphatically refused consent, and was obdurate to all coaxing. Then Grace played her trump card. Their friend Mrs. Stuart was going on the same steamer. With a married woman for a chaperon, what further objection could there be? Seeing that he was check-mated, and that his daughter, as usual, would have her way in the end anyhow, Mr. Harmon reluctantly capitulated.
He was down at the steamer to see her off, a tall, distinguished-looking, silvery-haired old gentleman, conspicuous in the group of friends who had come to bid his daughter bon voyage. It was a noisy, jolly, unruly crowd. Every one talked at the same time, pushing and elbowing, blocking the gangway up which rushed each minute fresh arrivals laden with rugs and handbags. Ten minutes more and the "All ashore" gong would sound, and then the big ship would slowly pull out and point her nose for the open sea. Grace stood in the center of the fashionably dressed throng, herself stylishly attired in a chic, long gray cloth directoire coat and picture hat, bestowing smiles and handshakes right and left like a queen holding court. Everybody was in high spirits, all except Mr. Harmon, who tried to look brave as he furtively wiped away a tear.
"Don't do that, dad, or I'll spoil my complexion," whispered Grace, making heroic efforts to swallow a hard lump that arose in her own throat. "One would think I were going away forever. I'll be back safe and sound before you imagine—you'll see!"
"I hope so, child, I hope so," murmured the old man, clasping her to his breast. "It's foolish of me, of course. All the same, I can't help wishing you weren't going. I have a sort of presentiment that something will happen."
Grace laughed merrily.
"Nonsense, dad! What can happen? Nothing ever happens on ocean voyages. They are awfully tame and exasperatingly free from incident. Shipwrecks and things like that occur only in novels. Sometimes I wish things would happen."
"Really, Grace!" protested a feminine voice at her side, "I do wish you wouldn't say such wicked things. You know how nervous I am."
The speaker was Mrs. Wesley Stuart, under whose protective wing Grace was traveling. She was a willowy and rather attractive blonde, not yet in the thirties, but with a complexion somewhat the worse for rich foods, old wines, and late hours. Showily dressed, with a large black felt mushroom hat and heavy pearl pendants in her ears, she talked with affected languor and used a gold lorgnon.
"Your father is quite right, dear," she went on. "There are all sorts of perils at sea. A hundred things might happen. Our machinery might break down, we might drift for weeks without being sighted, we might collide with an iceberg in the fog, we might even turn turtle. Don't you remember that awful affair of the City of Berlin? Of course you don't. It was before your time—before mine, too, for that matter. The steamer left Liverpool about thirty years ago, crowded with passengers. She never reached port, and has never been heard of from that day to this. Every vestige of her was wiped out. They never picked up a life-boat, or even so much as a steamer-chair. The theory was that she turned turtle and went right down."
"No—really—you don't say so!" exclaimed behind them a man's voice with the exaggerated Piccadilly intonation some Englishmen affect. "It's a jolly shame, don'tcher know—to frighten Miss Harmon like that. She'll believe every bally thing you tell her and get the blue spiders and all that sort of thing—eh, what?"