And she smiled as she retorted, “I was merely trying to please you. You say you are averse to intelligence in a woman.”
28“Well, I take it all back. I am averse to nothing in a woman, except absence.”
Father Burke took all this in, and he disapproved. Captain Boyd was by no means the sort of man he would have selected for companion to this maiden. The young man’s appreciation of the lady herself was too honest and too evident. It bore, to the observant priest, suspicious resemblance to a tender passion unskilfully concealed. Perilous food for a yearning spirit! Of course she was heavenly minded, and spiritual to the last degree, at present; but she was mortal. And the soul of a girl like Elinor Marshall was too precious an object to be thrown away on a single individual–above all, on a Protestant. Was it not already the property of The Church? And then, there was little consolation in the knowledge that she was to be in constant intercourse with this man for a week, and during that time beyond all priestly influence.
The Maid of the North, until she passed Deer Island, bore a cheerful band of passengers. Then, in the open sea, she turned her nose a little more to the north, and while riding the waves as merrily as ever, she did it with a 29greater variety of motion. And this variety of motion, a complex, unhallowed shifting of the deck, first sidewise down, then lengthwise up, then all together and further down–with a nauseating quiver–was emphasized by zephyrs from the engine-room and kitchen–zephyrs redolent with oil and cooking and bilge water. All these, in time, began to trifle with the interiors of certain passengers, and to paralyze their mirth.
Among early victims was Mr. Appleton Marshall. After storing his mind with the financial news and social gossip of the morning paper, he had rejoined his friends. Sitting beside his niece, he participated, at intervals, in the conversation, his manner becoming more and more distant until, at last, it vanished altogether. To all who cared to see, it was plain that this stately and usually complacent gentleman was losing interest in external matters.
He seemed annoyed when a steward, about one o’clock, appeared on deck and rang a bell, announcing dinner. At this summons Patrick Boyd took out his watch and was obviously astonished at the flight of time.
“I had forgotten my friend,” he exclaimed, and he hurried below.
30At the dinner-table Elinor Marshall sat between her confessor and her uncle, the latter clinging bravely to his post through the soup and fish. Then, after watching for a moment the various viands as they rose and fell with the heaving of the ship, accompanied, as it seemed to him, by a similar rising and sinking of his own digestive apparatus, he remarked, with some severity, that he felt no hunger. And he left the table with dignity, yet with a certain expedition. As the uncle disappeared, Patrick Boyd came in and took a seat opposite the lady and the priest.
“How did you find your friend?” Father Burke inquired.