Miss Fleming was one of the last to forsake the deck that night. She was a good sailor, and not likely to lose any time by sickness. "I can't afford to lose any time," she said to herself, her lips making a thin seam across her face, as she sat hour after hour waiting for him to return. "What I do must be done now or never." She had taken every penny she had in the world to pay for this fortnight in the ship with him.
"I shall succeed," rising, her thin cheeks pale, but her eyes like coals of fire. As she went through the cabin she scowled at the pretty young girls, who, like the birds in the fable, had a thousand lures of innocence and beauty and plumage. She was Reynard with his one trick—friendship and whatever she hid behind it. "But I never failed yet," she said as she shut herself into the darkness of her state-room.
CHAPTER XVII.
The captain reported himself "under the weather" the day after the nutting frolic. His guests had all gone excepting Van Ness, who remained in New York, appearing at the farm every afternoon with a fresh invoice of diffusive sweetness and light. In a week the captain gave up his daily visit to the club, and one morning Jane found him in the work-room, busy again among the dusty models, with a gray pinched line about his jaws. She ran to put on her apron, and worked with him, jesting and laughing, but as soon as she could escape sent Dave to the doctor. The old gentleman came, chatted a while, and soon followed Jane out to the hall.
"Florida to-morrow? Southern California? No, not now. Let him have home comforts and good nursing this winter. Anything he wants to eat. Humor him as much as you choose."
Jane stood holding by the back of a chair: "You do not mean that there is danger?"
"I see no change in the symptoms," cautiously. "We'll try the new prescription a few days, and we shall see—we shall see."
Jane went back to her father and the models, and talked calmly of screws and pistons. If she could only take the shaking old gray head to her breast and cry her heart out! If she could lie down in the grave with him! They had been such friends all her life! He was the only friend she ever had. She got up and ran out of doors once or twice: her breath was leaving her: his face, with the strange change in it, drove her away. Outside, the ducks were wabbling in and out of the pond, the sun was shining, the chrysanthemums and crimson prince's feather were all in flower. Dave was currying a horse in the stable-yard and whistling a dancing tune. What a foolish fright she had been in! Everything in the world was going just as usual. When she went back, too, the captain was pulling out his patent scissors from a drawer, laughing, his face flushed. He never looked better in his life.
She never left him after that. She had a couch made for herself at his door, that she might hear the moment that he stirred in the night. She could see no change in him from day to day, but she watched everybody keenly who came near him, trying to read their opinion of him in their faces. She fancied there was a difference in the manner of even Dave and Buff to him—a forced jocularity, a peculiar tenderness of voice. Bruno, she observed, had deserted her altogether and kept close to his master.