The situation was maddening! Nothing on board to eat; soft-shell crabs and the best bill of fare of a Southern kitchen ordered at home for seven o'clock; a couple of fiddlers coming from "the Swamp" at nine; and Cousin Susan, the cook, even then promising little Stump Neal "all de bonyclábá he cu'd stow ef he'd jest friz dis yar cream fo' de new missis."
"It is too provoking for anything!" the new missis whispered to Thornton, as he stopped by his wife's side for an instant and moved on to consult with some of the married men who were smoking in luxuriant carelessness forward. Very little consolation he got there. Ellis from Annapolis said he had known calms last two days, and sundry forcible remarks were made when it was discovered that the last cigars were then in our mouths. This was the last straw. Thornton felt furious with every one, and muttered dark wishes that ante-war power might be restored to him over the person of Uncle Brian when we got home—if we ever did—as he reflected that that ancient African had guaranteed a breeze.
Mollie Brogden smiled lazily at him as Donaldson fanned her slowly, and waited until Thornton should pass, so that the talk which was leading up to the inscription of a clever piece of poetry on her fan might be continued.
"By the way, Donaldson," as a sudden inspiration seemed to strike Thornton, "did you ever hear anything more of Kitty after I left you at Christmas?"
The sweetness of that piece of poetry on the fan was never revealed. The blue parasol went up with a jump, and a look assured Donaldson that certain words had better have been left unsaid that afternoon if "Kitty" should not be satisfactorily explained. I felt sorry for him, for every one caught at the idea of something new, and the thought of an explanation to the whole of that boatload, keen for all sorts of badinage, would have tempted me overboard, I am sure. However, Donaldson smiled very composedly, and said he believed the family were still in Texas, although he had heard nothing more than Thornton already knew of their history.
Well, that simply made matters worse: Texas and Kitty were suggestive enough for anything, and I caught a whisper from Miss Brogden that seemed to imply that she doubted whether he had really been so inconsolable for last summer's diversions as he had tried to make her believe. That settled him, for I knew he had come down to Thornton's expressly to see her, and he assured us it was a very small story, but if we cared to hear it perhaps the breeze would come meanwhile, and he would try to give the facts exactly as they had come to his knowledge.
"We were a few hours out from Liverpool," he began, "and the smoking-room of the Russia was pretty well filled with all sorts of men, none of whom of course felt much at home yet, but who were gradually being shaken together by the civilizing influence of tobacco and the occasional lurches that the cross-chop of the Channel was favoring us with. I was sitting near the door with a man from Boston whom I found on board returning from a wedding-trip, and who, I discovered, had taken orders since leaving Harvard, where I had known him slightly as a bookish sort of fellow and not very agreeable; but as I was alone and his wife was quite pretty, I was glad to meet him.
"Well, we were running over old times, without paying much attention to the guide-book talk that was being poured out round us, when somebody laid a hand on my shoulder and one of the most attractive voices I ever heard asked 'if there was room for a stranger from Texas?' This formal announcement of himself by a newcomer made a little lull in the conversation, but my friend made room for him in our corner, and he quietly enveloped himself in smoke for the rest of the evening.
"He was not inattentive, though, to the drift of our talk, for when Hamilton mentioned having been at the Pan-Anglican, and spoke of the effect such conventions should produce, the Texan's cigar came out of his mouth and his blue eyes grew deeper in their sockets as he interrupted us with the remark: 'The conventions of all the Bible-men in the world would not have made La Junta any better if it had not been for Kitty. You know what Junta was before she came?' he continued, seeing us look a little surprised—'nothing but cards and drink, and—worse; and now'—and he laid his hand on his hip as if from habit—'now we have no trouble there any more.'
"The oddness of the expression 'Bible-men,' I remember, struck me at the time, but Hamilton made some explanatory reply, for the quiet force of the soft voice had a certain persuasiveness about it without the aid of his gesture, although the smoke was so thick that we could not see whether he carried the instruments of his country or not.