III
THE MAJOR—AND OTHERS
The first morning in blue water developed the fact that breakfast on the Andromeda was destined to be a broken meal. In the white-lacquered dining-saloon, only three members of the ship's company, Major Terwilliger, Madeleine Barclay's father, and Professor Sanford were at table, though Van Dyck and Billy Grisdale had been still earlier, had already breakfasted and had gone on deck.
As I took my place, the major, affecting the bluff heartiness which was merely a mask for an ease-loving, self-centered habit which never for a moment lost sight of the creature comforts, was trying, quite ineffectually, to draw Sanford into a discussion of the merits and demerits of certain French liqueurs—a subject upon which the clean-living, abstemious professor of mathematics was as poorly informed as any anchorite of the desert.
"Vermuth, now; a dash of vermuth in your morning bitters," the major expatiated; "there's nothing like it for an appetiser. I'm not saying anything against the modern cocktail, properly compounded; it has its place. But for a morning eye-opener it is crude. Believe me, a Frenchman knows the meaning of the word apéritif much better than we do."
"Yes?" said the professor, with a palpable effort to galvanize an interest which he was evidently far from feeling.
"Quite so," declared the major; after which he proceeded to enlarge upon American backwardness in the matter of picking and choosing among the potables, inveighing with all the warmth of a past master in the art of good living against the barbarism of taking one's liquor raw.
While the major was giving his alcoholic homily, and not omitting, meanwhile, to keep his plate well supplied with the crispest bits of bacon and the hottest of the rolls, I had an opportunity to observe the silent man whose place was opposite my own. Holly Barclay had changed greatly in the three years which had elapsed since I had last seen him in New York. I never knew—I do not yet know—what particular form his dissipation took, but it had left its indubitable record in the haggard face, the deep-sunken eyes, and in the womanish hands which trembled a bit in spite of an evident effort to hold them steady.