“It isn’t as if you were as I am, and only had your pay,” he remonstrated; “or it isn’t as if you were only knocking the bottom out of your own life,” he continued, throwing in the arguments as they came to him. “And perhaps you do not think I know what has been the matter with you ever since we left here in the spring; but I do, and I call coming back here fate.”
“It looks to me as if the department had rather a large share in that,” replied Pennington, half-heartedly. “But don’t let us worry about it, Dutchman,” he added, very much in the way he used to quiet his friend in the old days when they were midshipmen together. It seemed to be his place to do the comforting, no matter whose the trouble. But now Morgan would not be comforted. He slid off the table, and went over to the lounge beside Pennington.
“Jack,” he began, with an earnestness which surprised even Pennington, who was used to his ways, “you have a perfect right to ruin your own life if you want to, although a good many of us would hate to see you do it; still, that is your own affair; but you haven’t any right to ruin her life. I’ve seen more of women than you have, and there are some who get over things of that sort. She never will.”
Pennington was silent. A party was coming down the veranda singing the refrain of a hearty English melody. They seated themselves immediately in front of the windows of the smoking-room and proceeded to light their pipes.
“She used to be such a jolly girl,” said one, in answer to some inaudible remark, “but she never goes anywhere now.”
Pennington and Morgan listened aimlessly, without well knowing why. Morgan chafed at the interruption, coming as it did at such a serious turn in their conversation, and it seemed to banish his last hope of influencing his friend. The lights in the smoking-room were low, and the broad, checkered shoulders of the speaker, whose back was turned, were pushed into the window, his elbows resting on the sill. His Oxford cap was tilted jauntily on one side of his head, and a pipe, as if to complete the poise, protruded from the other. The subject thus brought up seemed an interesting one to the whole party, for those who were still humming the air stopped to join in the talk. It was evident that some person was being discussed.
“Had she been with us to-night we shouldn’t have had such a beastly slow time,” said another.
To this there was a unanimous assent.
“I wonder what is the reason of it all?” he continued.
“They say it is some chap in the American navy,” volunteered another, “who was here last spring—”