David, who was leaning back against a rock and had his arms folded, flushed a little in his turn.
“I don’t think that was ever, really, an engagement,” he offered.
And remembering suddenly that he had terminated what had been a rather definite understanding with Sylvia, simply that he might offer Gabrielle his name and his protection, he had an instant of being hardly able to believe himself the same man.
“So then we all left the next morning. That was fun!” the girl went on. “The ship was delightful, and nobody was sick, and it was a January day as warm and green as June—and Tom was just wild with high spirits; I never saw him so gay! And well he might be, for he and Sylvia had been married that morning.
“Sylvia, on the other hand, acted very queerly; cried a good deal—stuck close to me and seemed cross. Once when I asked her if it was Tom that was worrying her, she said savagely ‘No,’ that she wished she had never seen Tom Fleming, and that he had wrecked her happiness for life. And she went back to Aunt Flora’s old talk,” Gabrielle added, seriously, “about the curse on the Flemings, and all that.
“She would hardly speak to Tom—and I can tell you, David,” the girl interrupted herself again to say, “I didn’t anticipate a particularly pleasant trip to Panama. Tom seemed queer, too, and Margret told me that she thought the whole thing was a mistake.
“I remembered afterward that Sylvia talked a good deal about the annulment of marriages on those first few days. She kept telling me that for a woman an annulment had no value, because any ‘honourable’ woman would feel herself just as much bound after it as before, but it would at least set the man free. That was two days after we sailed, and it was that very night that I was playing cribbage with the old captain—who was a perfect old Scottish darling!—and afterward went up on the bridge with him. And when I was slipping down to my room, knowing that Margret would be out of her senses with anxiety, and Sylvia hunting for me perhaps, I passed a man and a woman at the rail.
“It was midnight, and there was no moon, but as I went by I heard the man’s voice, and it was Tom’s. And then I saw that the woman was Sylvia, and that she was crying. Tom was sort of growling—you know how he talks when he is a little angry and a little ill at ease—and I heard Sylvia say the word ‘annulment.’ ‘I can’t stand it, Tom, it was all a silly mistake!’ she said. ‘You can’t talk like that, Sylvia,’ Tom said, in a sort of shocked voice.
“Suddenly the whole thing came to me,” Gabrielle said, with all a child’s wondering, delighted stare fixed upon David, “and I went straight up to them and put my arm about them from behind and said, ‘Tell me about it, I know you’re married!’
“Of course, I was delighted—much more so than you can believe—I didn’t have to pretend that! Because I had had a sort of fear that once they both got back to their natural surroundings Sylvia would get proud and collegy—you know what I mean?—again,” the girl went on, “and that Tom would begin to feel awkward and nothing would come of their affair. So I made a great fuss—cried, really, I was so excited! And just then Margret came along the deck, afraid I’d gone overboard or something, and we told her—and she laughed and cried. And Sylvia began to seem more normal, especially when we went to our cabin, and I said what a dear old fellow Tom was, and how he adored her. She began to smile—the way she does, you know, when she really doesn’t want to smile—and began to talk pityingly about a very pretty English girl on board who had taken an immense fancy to him.