The Adventures of a Modest Man

"Wait!" I said with a hideous smile. "We have not yet left Sandy Hook! And I solemnly promise you both that if either of you ever again ask me one question concerning that pig – nay, if you so much as look askance at me over the breakfast bacon – neither you nor I will ever leave Sandy Hook alive!"

They have kept their promises – or I should never have trodden the deck of the S. S. Cambodia, the pride of the great Cunard Line, with my daughter Dulcima on one side and my daughter Alida on the other side of me, and my old friend Van Dieman waving me adieu from a crowded pier, where hundreds of handkerchiefs flutter in the breeze.

"Au revoir et bon voyage!" he called up to me.

"Toujours la politesse," I muttered, nodding sagely.

"That was a funny reply to make, papa," said Dulcima.

"Not at all," I replied, with animation; "to know a language is to know when to use its idioms." They both looked a little blank, but continued to wave their handkerchiefs.

"À bien-tôt!" called Alida softly, as the towering black sides of the steamer slipped along the wooden wharf.

Van Dieman raised his hat on the pier below, and answered: "À bien-tôt? C'est la mort, jusqu'à bien-tôt! Donc, vîve la vie, Mademoiselle!"

"There is no necessity in chattering like a Frenchman when you talk French," I observed to Alida. "Could you make out what Van Dieman said to you?"

"Y – yes," she admitted, with a slight blush.

I glanced at Dulcima. There was a mischievous light in her blue eyes.

"Pooh!" I thought; "Van Dieman is forty if he's a day."

While the ship slid on past Castle William and poked her nose toward the forts at the Narrows, I watched the distant pier which we had left. It was still black with people, moving like ants. And, as I looked, I muttered ever: "Pooh! Van Dieman's forty. There's nothing in it, nothing in it, nothing whatever."

Off Fort Hamilton I noticed that Alida had a tear in one of her brown eyes. "There's nothing in it," I repeated obstinately.

Off Sandy Hook we ran into a sea-storm. In a few minutes many of the passengers went below; in a few more minutes the remainder of the passengers went below; and I was on the way below with my daughter Alida on one arm and my daughter Dulcima on the other.

"There is nothing in it," I reflected, as the ship shuddered, pitched, and we involuntarily began running down a toboggan slide, taking little timorous steps. Then the deck flew up and caught the soles of our shoes before we were ready to put our feet down. "Alida," I said, "do you feel bored?"

There was no mistaking the tears in her eyes now. "There's nothing in it. There's nothing in anything," I muttered faintly. And I was right as far as it concerned the passengers on the pitching Cambodia.

CHAPTER II

A CHAPTER DEPICTING A RATHER GARRULOUS REUNION

The second day we ran out of the storm. I remember on that day that I wore a rather doggy suit of gray – a trifle too doggy for a man of my years. In my button-hole reposed a white carnation, and as I strolled into the smoking-room I was humming under my breath an air from "Miss Helyet" – a thing I had not thought of in twenty years.

"Well, upon my word!" exclaimed a man who looked up from his novel as I entered the doorway. "Gad! You haven't changed in twenty years! – except that your moustache is – "

"Sure! And my temples, Williams! Besides, I have two grown-up daughters aboard! How are you, anyway, you Latin Quarter come-back?"

We settled ourselves, hands still warmly clasped.

"You're not going back to Paris?" I asked.

"Why, man, I live there."

"By George, so you do! I forgot."

There was a silence – that smiling, retrospective silence which ends inevitably in a sigh not entirely painful.

"Are any of the old men left there?" I asked.

"Some."

"I – I suppose the city has changed a lot. Men who've been over since, say so."

"It hasn't changed, radically."

"Hasn't it, Williams?" I asked wistfully.

"No. The old café is exactly the same. The Luxembourg Quarter will seem familiar to you – "

"I'm not going there," I said hastily.

He smiled; I could see him doing it, askance. But my features remained dignified and my attitude detached.

"I wonder," I began carelessly, "whether – "

"She got married," he said casually; "I'm glad. She was a sweet little thing."

"She was exceedingly charming," I said, selecting a cigar. "And the other?"

"Which?"

"I forget her name."

"Oh, you mean Delancy's?"

"Yes."

"I don't know whatever became of her," he said.

"Whatever became of Delancy?"

"Oh, he did what we all usually do – he came back, married, and spent the better part of his life in trying to keep his daughter from marrying that young Harroll."

"Sir Peter's son?"

"Yes. I was a guest at the Delancy's at the time, and I nearly died. Harroll confided in me, Catharine Delancy confided in me, John Delancy told me his woes. It's an amusing story. Do you want to hear it?"

"Go ahead," I said. "My sympathies are already with Delancy. I've a pair of daughters myself, and I'm trying to shoo away every sort of man and keep 'em for myself a little longer."

Williams smiled:

"Well, you listen to what those two did to John Delancy. It was some."