A BEWILDERED, crushed Rocky Kane stood tightly holding the rail; staring down at the softly black water that ran so smoothly along the hull beneath; muttering in whispers that at intervals broke out into heated speech. This strange princess had humiliated him perfectly, completely; there had been nothing he could say, nothing to do but go; and she had let him go without a look or a further thought. He told himself it was unfair. He had swallowed his pride and apologized. Could a man do more?
But pressing upward through this chaotic mental surface of hurt pride and insistent self-justification came an equally insistent memory of his outrageous conduct toward her. As the moments passed, the memory intensified into a painfully vivid picture. His native intelligence, together with the undeveloped decency that was somewhere within him, kept at him with dart-like, stinging thoughts. He had insulted not only herself but her race as well, in assuming a ruthless right to make free with her.
Then self-justification again; how could he know that she spoke English and dressed like the girls back home? Was it fair of her to masquerade like that?
He was miserably wrong, of course. And his nerves were terribly upset. That was at least part of the trouble, his nerves; he lighted a cigarette to steady them. The match shook in his hand. This nervous trembling had been increasing lately; he found it an alarming symptom. Perhaps the trouble was inherent weakness. Ability like his father's often skipped a generation; and character. Yes, he was weak, he had failed at everything. His college career was a wreck; a monstrous wreck, he believed, echoes from which would follow him through life. To his incoherent mind it seemed that he had about all the vices—drinking, gambling, pursuing helpless girls, even smoking opium. His one faith had been money; but now he suddenly, wretchedly, knew that even the money might fail him. It was as easy to toss away a million as a hundred on the red or the black. And then young men who wasted themselves acquired diseases from the terrors of which no fortune could promise release; a thought that had long dwelt uncomfortably in a sensitive, deep-shadowed corner of his brain.... a brain that was racing now, beyond control.
Her unfairness lay in so publicly snubbing him. Her father knew the facts, as did Miss Carmichael, and the big mate, that old preacher with a mysterious past. Who was he, anyhow—setting up to regulate other people's lives?
Then rose among these turbulent thoughts a picture of the princess as she was now, there in the social hall. Tears welled into his eyes; he brushed them away, lighted a fresh cigarette and deeply inhaled the smoke. He had rushed out; suddenly, wildly, he desired to rush back. She was beautiful. She had quaintly moving charm. A rare little lady! It seemed almost that he might compel her to listen while he explained. But what was it that he was to explain? That he was some other than the dirty sort they all knew him to be, that he had proved himself to be?
The wild thoughts were like a beating in his brain. It was his father's fault, this crazy nervousness, and his mother's.... He hated that big mate. Self-pity rose like a tidal wave, and engulfed him. He stared and stared at the softly dark water. Beginning with about his sixteenth year he had wrestled often with the thought of suicide, as so many sensitive young men do. Now the water fascinated him; it was so still, it moved so resistlessly on to the sea. “A pretty easy way to slip out. Just a little splash—-I could climb down. Nobody'd know. Nobody'd care much of a damn. Oh, the old man would think he cared, but he wouldn't. He'll never make a bank president out of me. And that's all he wants.”
A voice, guardedly friendly, said, “Better not let yourself talk that way.”
He turned with a start. Miss Carmichael was standing there by the rail. So he had talked aloud—another unpleasant symptom.
“You—you saw what—”