“O Lor’!” exclaimed Courtesy, falling back upon her original line of defence. “An utter stranger ... I must go and button Mrs. Rust into her evening gown.”
There is something very annoying to a woman in being accused of innocence. The suffragette was quite cross.
For the next two days the Caribbeania threaded her way cautiously between shore and shore. The horizon was frilled with palm-embroidered lands. Dry, terrible-looking beaches, backed by arid brown hills, marred the soft character of those calm seas. It was as if the Caribbeania saluted the coast of South America, and South America turned her back upon her visitor. At two or three ports in that forbidding land the boat touched. Drake had passed that way, and had left his ill-gotten halo upon the coast, but that was the only life of the land. The flat, dead towns seemed brooding over flat, dead tragedies.
It was almost a relief to the travellers when the last night fell, and the ship was enclosed in darkness and its trivial insularity. There was a great dance that night. Captain Walters called it the Veterans’ dance, because the chalked deck was thick with non-combatants, who had determined to cast care aside and join with youth, because after all it was the last night, and one would never meet any of these people again. As a matter of fact, there was no youth to be joined, for youth sat out and began its farewells. Half a dozen hours is not an over-large allowance of time for farewells between people who have known each other three throbbing ocean weeks.
The suffragette actually danced with the chief engineer. He always danced with ladies who could not find partners, being a conscientious young man of forty-two, with a brand-new bride at home. The suffragette knew well that by his courtesy she was branded as one undesired, and she laughed her invisible cynical laugh.
I think men are akin to sheep as well as to monkeys, and the theory only needs a Darwin to trace the connection. I have yet to meet the man who, where women are concerned, does not follow in the track of others of his kind. I think that very few men conceive an original preference for a woman unbiassed by the public tendency.
Directly the gardener saw the suffragette dancing with the chief engineer, he wondered why he was not dancing with her himself, although she danced rather badly. The gardener felt a mysterious call to go and monopolise her directly she was at liberty.
“I’m glad you have come to talk to me,” said the suffragette. “Because I shall go on shore early to-morrow, and should like to say good-bye to you.”
“Good-bye?” questioned the gardener.
“You didn’t really expect me to stay with you, did you?” she asked.