“Miss Cartwright, Major Slocum,” he said, “this is my—this is Mr.—” he hesitated the merest fraction of a second—“Mr. Cole, who is travelling with me this trip.”
Miss Cartwright nodded, the Major bowed, Keller pulled off his cap. They descended the steps in a straggling procession, Miss [437] Cartwright and Bronston being in front, the Major next and Keller bringing up the rear. At the foot of the stairs Bronston addressed the young lady.
“I’ll relieve you of my coat now,” he said. “I’m afraid you did find it rather heavy.” He looked straight into her eyes as he spoke and touched his lips with a forefinger. She nodded back to show she thoroughly understood the signal, and then he took the ulster across his arm and he and Keller moved on ahead.
“Look here, Bronston,” grumbled Keller when they were out of earshot of the Major and his niece, “you acted kind of funny up yonder. It looked to me like you didn’t care much about introducing me to your swell friends.”
“To tell you the truth,” apologised Bronston, “I forgot for the moment what your travelling name was—couldn’t remember whether it was Cole, or something else. That’s why I hung fire. It did make the situation a bit awkward, didn’t it? I’m sorry.”
“Oh, all right,” said Keller; “that explains it. But I was a little sore just for a minute.”
At the door leading into the first cross hall Bronston glanced back over his shoulder. Miss Cartwright and her uncle were not following them. They had halted upon an untenanted stretch of deck, and the young woman was saying something to her uncle and accenting with gestures what she said. Her hands moved [438] with the briskness which generally accompanies an eager disclosure of important tidings. The Major, his stately head bent to hear her, was nevertheless looking at the vanishing figures of the two men.
Bronston smiled gently to himself as he and Keller crossed the threshold and headed for the dining saloon. He didn’t go near Miss Cartwright or Major Slocum again that day, but in the course of the afternoon he, watching from a distance, saw her in earnest conversation with two of her friends from Evanston—and both of these two were women. Immediately Bronston went below and stayed there. He didn’t even get up for dinner. The excuse he gave Keller, when Keller came in at dinnertime, was that he wanted to go over some papers connected with his case. The small desk at which he sat was littered with papers and he was steadily making notes upon a scratch pad. He asked Keller to ask their dining-room steward to bring him a light meal upon a tray.
At this point we digress, in order to drag in the fact that this ship, the Mesopotamia, was one of the largest ships afloat at this time. The following year there would be bigger ones in commission, but for the moment she ranked among the largest. She was over eight hundred feet long and of a beam measurement and a hull depth to correspond; but even upon a craft of such amplified proportions as this was [439] news travels with amazing rapidity, especially if it be news calculated to arouse and to excite. Such a ship might be likened to a small, compact town set afloat, with all the social ramifications of a small town and with all of a small town’s curiosity regarding the private affairs of the neighbours. Ashore gossip flies swiftly enough, goodness only knows; at sea it flits from point to point, as if on the wings of the swallow. What one knows every one else knows, and knows it very soon too.
The digression is concluded. Let us return to the main thread of our narrative. Let us go back to the joint occupants of D-forty.