"C Q", or, In the Wireless House/Chapter 8
VIII
In which Micky has a strange dream and Mrs. Trevelyan becomes worried about pearls and other things.
MICKY dreamed, at the last, strange dreams. “’T was brillig and the slithy toves” were clinging like huge leeches to the sides and stern oi the ship, and trying to climb on board, while he, alone, in the moonlight, pushed their white jelly-like tentacles off the rail. But they came all about him and one larger than the rest swarmed its white pulpy body over and grasped him round the waist and legs and arms and held him helpless and smothered—and laughed a silvery, glittering laugh and dragged him to the stern, while Cloud sat cross-legged on the deck-house roof and played, “Ah ’l lend yo’ ma’ hat; Ah ’l lend yo’ ma’ flat!” on a tinkling mandolin. Then the “tove” pulled him gently over and they plunged swiftly downward into the boiling froth of the wake and were tossed around and around, still locked in a strangling embrace.
The water roared all about them and away up above, through the foam, he could see the stars whirling in spirals and Cloud still playing on the mandolin, then the “tove” released him and he worked his way through the dark currents for miles along the bottom of the ocean until he came groping through the coal chute of the vicarage, and found himself in the library, sitting at the desk with one of his uncles sermons in his hand, and the Captain’s steward was trying to take it away from him. singing, “Rocked in the craydul of ther deep, I lay me down in peace to sleep.”
Just then the sun rose and suffocated him, and he floated out through the vicarage garden until he lay in the broad noonday heat by the lilac arbor and became very, very happy and peaceful and sleepy—just like the song. There was a smell of violets all about him and Evelyn Farquhar came daintily across the lawn in a white frock with a big blue sash, smiling at him with parted lips and teasing eyes, and he kept his own shut and pretended not to see her. She came close and bent over him as he lay on the hot grass and touched his hair, and whispered in that low, sweet voice of hers,—“I. L. Y.—but I ’m engaged to Cosmo Graeme. Oh, Micky dear, why did you go away?” And he gave a great sob, for he knew she could never be his, and reached for her with his arms, but she vanished, leaving only the smell of the violets behind her, and he heard a tiny voice say right below his window, “Just knock him enough to push him over the line and you ’ll stay in the ‘9’ yourself.” He knew it was the little hunchback—playing shuffle-board—in the lilac arbor. There was something wrong about the whole thing he felt indignantly, and struggled to his feet amid a shower of yellow papers.
The sun was pouring through the windows of the wireless house. There was a pungent odor of violets everywhere and—he looked through the window—Mrs. Trevelyan was just going down the ladder.
It came to him with something of a shock that he must have been asleep—and that the Captain had n’t got his news, and it bothered him for a minute until he remembered the other events of the night before and how he had kept Cloud locked in his state-room. Then he quite forgot the Captain. His own back was lame and his muscles felt stiff and creaky. He must get right after Cloud; there was no question about that.
“Whew!” he whiffed as he threw open the forward window. “Smells like a chemist’s!” He stooped laboriously and gathered the scattered sheets, noticing the absence of the draft he had prepared for the Captain’s use. Perhaps Mrs. Trevelyan had swiped it. Then with a feeling of relief his eye caught the jottings he had made of the news from Poldhu and the Roakby affair. Lucky that hadn't been stolen while he slept,—and yet, if Mrs. Trevelyan had been up there, no doubt she had read it and by this time it was all over the ship! No—she was Cloud’s friend. Of course she wouldn’t give him away! Or would she! Perhaps she had gone directly to Cloud himself and taxed him with it. Anyhow he must get busy and look after his prisoner of war.
He brushed his hair—the hair that something had touched—in front of his cracked sixpenny mirror, straightened his collar and tie and swabbed his face and hands with the cor-ner of a towel stuck in the water pitcher. These primitive ablutions over, he felt in his pocket for Cloud’s key, removed from behind the door an old worn cap to take the place of the one lost overboard, and slowly climbed down the ladder.
Outside Cloud’s room he stopped and listened. There was nothing going on in there and he knocked softly. There was no response. He thrust the key into the lock turned it and opened the door. The stateroom was empty; the bird had flown. Moreover, the steward had been in and put things quite to rights. The place looked just like any other second-class cabin,—not a bit like the den of a murderer or the son of a marquis or of any other extraordinary or sensational person. The silk curtains bellied gently at the port-holes and over the berth; there was an overcoat—yes! the very overcoat Cloud had hung over the rail—peacefully hooked against the back of the door; and there were clean sheets and pillow-cases on the bed. No sign anywhere of Cloud’s suicidal attempt. Where was he? Overboard, perhaps?
A shadow darkened the wall and the gaunt face of the second-class passenger appeared in the port-hole.
“Good morning,” said Micky cheerily. “You gave me quite a start, you know! How on earth did you get out?”
Cloud left the port-hole and came to the door of the state-room. He looked very white and a neat bandage had taken the place of Micky’s improvised one of the night before.
“You forgot the steward,” he said. “I pretended to be asleep, until finally I could n’t keep up the bluff any longer and the chap let himself in from the outside. He did n’t notice that there was n’t any key.”
He held out a lean, muscular hand which Micky clasped firmly.
“How ’s your head?” inquired the latter.
“My head ’s well enough,” returned Cloud. Then, “I ’m afraid I put you to a lot of trouble last night.”
“Not at all! Not at all!” rejoined Micky as if saving people from committing suicide were a daily occurrence with him. “You see the old boat—maybe you remember?—well, the old boat sort of lifted herself at the psychological moment and chucked us in where we be-longed. Nasty place out there. My! You ’ve got a grip on you! My back ’s as lame as after a house match at ‘The Hill.’”
“Did you go to Harrow?” asked Cloud. “So did I—I was in Sandford’s.”
“Well, I was in Bailey’s. We licked you three years running when I was in the house. Not because I was in it, of course. By the way, you ’re not contemplating doing anything like that again, are you? You see I could n’t guarantee that it would come exactly the same way.”
Cloud smiled a wan smile.
“I give you my word," he answered simply, “as a fellow Harrorian, not to make a fool of myself again.”
He held out his hand again. Micky took it, and looked him in the eye.
“Honor bright?” he asked.
“Honor bright!” replied Cloud.
“Thanks,” said Micky. “By the way, you might drop up to the wireless house any time you feel a bit off your peck. I ’m there most of the time, especially evenings. I ought to tell you, right now, that 1 inadvertently overheard your little talk last evening with Mrs. Trevelyan. However, that’s all behind us.”
Cloud looked at him inquiringly.
“You heard all we said?”
“Yes, I think so,” answered Micky lightly. “Of course none of it is my business, so long as you don’t try to deprive us of your company! She ’s a very circumspect lady, Mrs. Trevelyan! But take it from me, there ’s no place on an ocean liner to discuss private matters except on the end of the bowsprit or in the crow’s nest! Even there some old woman from Putney would probably get on to what you were saying by reading your lips.”
He handed Cloud the key to the state-room. Cloud received it without comment, his innate English distaste for any display of emotion struggling with his genuine gratitude to Micky. Turning his back he put the key into the lock and, as he fumbled with it, he jerked out awkwardly a few disconnected phrases that contained among others the words:
“Awfully obliged—what you did last night. Really did n’t know what I was doing.—Never forget it.—Must think me a damn coward. Try to explain it all some time.—Feeluig down and out.”
“Don’t mention it, old chap!” chirped Micky. “We all make asses of ourselves occasionally. Now I ’ve got to deliver a few radios, but I ’ll see you at lunch and maybe tonight you will come up and smoke a pipe with me?”
Cloud nodded and kept on fumbling with the key, while Micky, glad to escape, and fully confident that, for the time being at least, any danger of the attempt being repeated was over, hastened away to the purser’s office with his Marconigrams—among them the one for Mrs. Trevelyan.
The purser looked suspiciously at him as he shoved the yellow slips under the grating, but Micky wore an air of entire unconcern.
“A little slow in transmission,” said the Marconi man casually, “but the fact is I was done up and slept right through until this minute. However, I ’ve dated ’em all this a. m. And anyhow nobody can get off this bloomin’ boat a minute sooner than New York,—that’s sure!”
The purser gave him a look of disgust.
“By Gad, you ’re a rum ’un!” he remarked fiercely, although Micky was a perennial joy to him. “I wonder you last a day—can hold your job a minute—with your infernal cheek and indifference! I bet you get the sack once and for all at the end of the voyage." He glanced over the radios. "One for Mrs. Trevelyan, too!” he added ruefully. “Oh, you ’d make an angel weep, you would!”
“Go on, Shylock!” growled Micky, sticking out his tongue at him. “Can you change me tuppence ha’penny? I would n’t have your little ‘dot and carry one’ job if they rated me with the ship’s surgeon!”
And he retreated to the scullery for a cup of coffee while the purser marked the charges and turned over the radios to the reading-room steward for delivery.
Mrs. Trevelyan had returned to her room and was gazing abstractedly out of the open window in a dim cloud of cigarette smoke. The news of Roakby’s murder had quite unnerved her. She had known him well, before her Trevelyan days,—too well for her own good. That he should have been put out of the way was no great loss either to her or to society at large. But that Cosmo Graeme—her friend—whose father’s house she had visited for weeks at a time, should be his murderer—liable to instant arrest—and (she shuddered) to be hung—! Could she sit calmly by and do nothing for him? See him run down and caught without raising a finger? Yet what could she do? Was not the information in the possession of the ship’s officers? She imagined them already in cold, impassive conference, debating as to whether it were better to arrest him now and put him in irons or wait until the ship should near the land and he could be turned over at once to the civil authorities. Cosmo Graeme—the youngest of a quartet of handsome, chivalrous brothers! Cosmo—the darling of the smartest set in England! How could he have! And then it came to her that perhaps Micky had not yet told the Captain. That perhaps she could persuade him to hold his peace and keep the matter secret until, at least, she could try and think what to do. And as she wondered, she puffed her cigarette faster and faster until it burnt her lips and she hastily threw it down. Yes, she must find Micky at once and use all her powers to induce him to become her ally.
“Marconigram for you, madam.”
The reading-room steward touched his cap smilingly as he handed it to her. Impatiently she tore open the paper.
“Government inspectors wise to your necklace.”
She stared at it helplessly. Wise to her necklace! How could they? Her necklace? Impossible! It was just a joke of Trevelyan’s! No, he never would have taken that amount of trouble for a joke! The Roakby affair faded out of her mind under the stress of this new and unexpected complication! She set her lips indignantly. She was sure the Government could n’t treat its citizens in any such despicable fashion. Trevelyan was a ninny,—an old woman! What did he mean by wiring her? Was it to advise her to declare the necklace and make herself liable to a duty of some thirty thousand dollars, or was it simply to give her the tip that extra precautions would be necessary to smuggle it safely in? That was it probably. Why, he ’d whine for six months if he had to pay all that money! And he ’d make her life miserable into the bargain. She crumpled the paper in her hand and tossed it into the scrap basket—where it was promptly found and read by Mrs. Dorrance within the hour.
Lily Trevelyan hurried back again to the wireless house. How foolish she had been not to act sooner and stop Micky before the damage had been done. Now it was probably too late.
She found him playing shuffle-board with the little hunchback who, used to kindness from all the world, greeted her with a smile, but she glanced at him quite coldly and to his surprise addressed herself to Micky with an imperative, “I must speak with you at once. You ’ll find me at the stern.” And Micky, yielding the game by default, promised shortly to return, quite to the satisfaction of his cheerful little friend, who regarded him with awe and admiration and thought him the most wonderful person on the seven seas.
Micky found Mrs. Trevelyan awaiting him on the bench where he had sat and watched Cloud's colorless face the night before, and her face, too, was pale and her chin quivered, and her hands in their fresh white kid gloves clasped and unclasped themselves in her lap, as she turned to him and asked with unconcealed anxiety:
"Have you told anybody about Roakby?"
Micky had never seen her like that—without her mask of light frivolity and teasing insincerity, and he liked her better than he ever had before.
“No, Mrs. Trevelyan,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because if you have n’t I want you to promise me that you won’t—at any rate not for a few days. I can’t explain. Only something very terrible may happen if you do. Please don’t ask me. I can’t think to-day. When I—when I read it over your shoulder in the wireless house it bowled me out or I ’d have waked you. I know I’d have no business to read it, of course, but now it ’s done. Please promise me you ’ll keep it to yourself.”
She raised a serious, sweet face to his and laid a beseeching hand upon his blue sleeve. He felt a quick pang of compunction for his unworthy thoughts of her. Was it possible that this woman was anything but noble? Had he not done her an injustice? Was there anything but entire unselfishness in this tense appeal directed towards the saving of a friend?
“Yes,” he answered slowly, “I ’ll promise you that—if you want—”
He hesitated. But anything save frankness was utterly abhorrent to him.
“I might as well tell you,” he added simply, “I overheard your talk with Cloud, that is, with Graeme, last night. I could n’t help it. I was just above you on the deck-house.”
“Then you know?” she asked quietly.
“The same as you,” he nodded. “I got it off Poldhu half an hour before you came aft. It ’s a bad mix up. They ’re sure to pinch him at quarantine. And I ’ll never be able to cut it all out. It must be the biggest story in England! Cosmo Graeme! Why, I ’ve always heard of Cosmo Graeme! He stroked the eight at Oxford, did n’t he? Give him up? No—I won’t give him up! Not for an old Ponsonby, or Scotland Yard, or the whole Marconi Company!”
"Oh, Micky!” she cried, her face flushing. “What a brick you are!—It will be our secret, won’t it? We ’ll not tell a soul! Give me your hand on it.”
She gave him her hand and Micky took it in his freckled paw and held it for a moment, and something coursed from her veins into his and made him tremble so that he let it drop.
"Good-by, Micky!" she whispered. "Remember!”
"Good-by," he answered, his heart beating a little faster. "I ’m not likely to forget!”
He stood there alone after she had gone with a strange feeling of exhilaration in all his body. The hand that had held hers still tingled from her clasp and his heart seemed somehow to have expanded like a toy balloon.
“My God!” he thought. “A woman like that could make you do anything!”
He waited for a long time watching the gulls, which without a quiver of their wings hung poised above the rail, and, by some unknown and unascertainable power of flight, were borne along through the air effortless, motionless save when a sudden gust deflected them for a moment from the angle of incidence, only to resume it instantly again and demonstrate how little man really knows of the secret laws of physical nature—to say nothing of the more complex mysteries of a woman's soul. And as he watched them and looked once more into the foaming whirlpool behind the stern he remem-bered with a strange revulsion of feeling his dream of the early morning and how the “Tove” had clasped him in her arms with a glittering, silvery laugh and drawn him over the side and down into the stinging depths, and he was still struggling in her embrace when the notes of “Roast Beef of Old England” recalled him to the reality of an empty stomach and his onerous duties as an officer who ranked the barber and the head second-cabin steward.