Topham was on board the Marlatic in good time the next morning.
He found himself in the midst of a jolly laughing throng that crowded and pushed and hugged and kissed and wept a little sometimes, but that the most part gave itself up to a perpetual chattering, like a flock of magpies—with more noise but with little more sense. All sorts of people were there, from the brandnew bride on her honeymoon to the gray old lady who was taking her granddaughter abroad; from the Cook’s tourist to the blasé young man who talked airily about crossing the “pond” and the grumpy globe trotter who hated the noise and confusion with his whole heart.
Topham leaned on the rail of the hurricane deck and watched the crowd idly. Somehow he felt lonely. Everybody else had friends; he seemed alone in having no one to see him off. It struck him suddenly that his life was a very lonely one. If Lillian Byrd had not proved faithless—
His ranging eyes fell upon a girl who was just coming up the plank in the wake of a granite-faced chaperone, and the current of his thoughts snapped short off. She was young, scarcely more than twenty, he judged, but there was something about her—he scarcely knew what—that set his pulses to pounding. With his whole strength he stared, and, as though drawn by his glance, the girl suddenly lifted her face and looked directly at him.
For an instant his heart stood still, then raced as it had never raced before, not even when Lillian Byrd had smiled at him in days gone by.
Never had he seen such eyes. They held him, enthralled him, with a magic that went beyond any reasoned process of the human brain. They seemed to fill the girl’s whole face—to fill it so that Topham thought he did not notice its other features; though later, he found that he could picture its every detail—the great masses of red-black hair; the clear dusky skin with a rose hiding in each cheek; the nose, chin, and teeth in keeping—not regular, not perfect according to canons of art, but compelling; a face for which men die.
Recklessly the navy officer stared—stared till the red flamed in the girl’s cheek, and she stumbled, her trembling fingers loosing their hold upon the rail.
She must have said something, though Topham could not hear her, for the hard-faced chaperone turned and caught her arm. Topham saw her shake her head in negation to some question. The next instant she looked up once more. But not as before! Coldly her glance swept Topham’s face, as coldly as if he did not exist. Then, before he could even attempt to catch her eyes, she had stepped upon the deck and was hidden from his view.
Topham drew his breath gaspingly. He had been holding it for quite a minute, unknowingly. His thoughts ran riot. Who was she? Who was she? What was her race, her state, her name? Her face bespoke a southern parentage; the blood that burned beneath it cried aloud of tropic heat. But her blue eyes were of the north. And the chaperone by her side could be nothing else than German—a veritable grenadier.
Certainly they were people of distinction in their own land—probably in any land. The purser might know. He would go and ask.