CHAPTER XXV
They steamed slowly past the Statue of Liberty, early in the afternoon a few days later. Jacob and his young companion were leaning over the rail, watching the great, tangled city slowly define itself through a shroud of mist.
“One good thing about this voyage,” the latter remarked sympathetically, “it’s taken your mind off yourself—made you forget your troubles, in a kind of way.”
“You mean about poor Sam?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking about your brother,” Felixstowe confessed. “I was thinking of the other little affair. Of course, it’s been rather a bad egg for you, so to speak, having her pop up every minute or two, but there’s something about life on one of these great liners—I don’t know what it is, but you seem to be able to shove all sorts of things out of your mind, eh?”
Jacob felt for a moment rather ashamed of himself. It was not like him to be inconstant in anything, and he would not for a moment admit that what he had regarded as the passion of his life had been merely a fantasy. At the same time, he could not ignore the fact that during the last few days he had been conscious of a sense of freedom which was altogether pleasant.
“I have conquered that,” he declared proudly. “For me it is finished. You must have observed my indifference at dinner last night. I find myself able to converse with her now without the slightest emotion.”
“Fine!” was the enthusiastic rejoinder. “You must have a will of iron. Those things do pull you about a bit, though. I remember an affair of my own with little Kitty Bond—second from the left in the front row of the Gaiety, you know. For three days she was simply dropping sugarplums down my throat, never took her eyes off me all through the show, welcome at any hour to the flat, though mother was in the country visiting the parson uncle—all the usual sort of slush, you know. And then one day some one told her about dad and figured out what my income was likely to be. Little Johnny in the rubber market it was. I shall never forget the night Kitty introduced me and then went off to supper with him in his coupé. Fairly gave me the pip.”