There were others on board, though, to whom this change was not so welcome, and who—for human nature is human after all—fervently wished this picked-up castaway—well—back again on the hulk from which he had been picked up. For Delia Calmour, with her beauty and tact and sunniness of disposition, had reigned a queen among the male section of the passengers, and the long voyage, now nearing its close, had been long enough to render more than one heart rather sore.
“I must not monopolise you all day, and every day, like this, child,” Wagram had said to her. “You are good-nature itself towards a tiresome old bore with but one idea in his head. You must go and make things lively for the others a bit sometimes or I shall feel like an interloper.”
“Am I tiring you, then?” she would answer softly.
“Now, you know that is absurd. Still, I must not be selfish.”
“You—selfish? What next?”
“I’m afraid I am—very. Now, they are getting up that last fancy-dress dance before we get into what may possibly be rough water. Go and help them in that as you would have done before. I want to see you enjoying yourself. I am afraid I am too much of a fogey to cut into that sort of thing actively myself.”
She did not answer that “that sort of thing” was an inane and vapid method of enjoying herself, compared with half-an-hour of ordinary conversation with him. She complied—and submissively. Incidentally, she found that the “enjoyment” involved a heated passage-of-arms with the third officer; item, subsequently with a fine young Australian whom she had refused twice during the voyage; but these were trifles light as air under the circumstances.
Then the days grew fewer and fewer, and the grey waters of the Bay of Biscay gave way to the greyer waters of the English Channel. The Runic would soon be securely docked in her berth.