The Thread of Flame

Chapter 5

That which, in my condition, irked me more than anything was the impossibility of being by myself. The steamer was a small one, with all the passengers of one class. Those who now crossed the Atlantic were doing it as best they could; and to be thrown pell-mell into a second-rate ship like the Auvergne was better, in the opinion of most people, than not to cross at all. It was a matter of eight or ten days of physical discomfort, with home at the other end.

I knew now that the month was September, and the equinox not far away. It was mild for the time of year, and, though the weather was rough, it was not dirty. With the winds shifting quickly from west to northwest and back again, the clouds were distant and dry, lifting from time to time for bursts of stormy sunshine. For me it was a pageant. I could forget myself in its contemplation. It was the vast, and I was only the infinitesimal; it was the ever-varying eternal, and I was the sheerest offspring of time, whose affairs were of no moment.

Nevertheless, I had pressing instant needs, or needs that would become pressing as soon as we reached New York. Between now and then there were five or six days during which I might recover the knowledge that had escaped me; but if I didn't I should be in a difficult situation. I should be unable to get money; I should be unable to go home. I should be lost. Unless some one found me I should have to earn a living. To earn a living there must be something I could do, and I didn't know that I could do anything.

Of all forms of exasperation, this began to be the most maddening. I must have had a profession; and yet there was no profession I could think of from which I didn't draw back with the peculiar sick recoil I felt the minute I approached whatever was personal to myself. In this there were elements contradictory to each other. I wanted to knowand yet I shrank from knowing. If I could have had access to what money I needed I should have been content to drift into the unknown without regret.

But there was a reserve even here. It attached to the word home. On that word the door had not been so completely shut that a glimmer didn't leak through. I knew I had a home. I longed for it without knowing what I longed for. I could see myself arriving in New York, fulfilling the regular dock routineand going somewhere. But I didn't know where. Of some ruptured brain cell enough remained to tell me that on the American continent a spot belonged to me; but it told me no more than the fact that the spot had love in it. I could feel the love and not discern the object. As to whether I had father or mother or wife or child I knew no more than I knew the same facts of the captain of the ship. Out of this darkness there came only a vision of flaming eyes which might mean anything or nothing.

I was unable to pursue this line of thought because Miss Blair came strolling by with the same nonchalant air with which she had passed me before lunch. I can hardly say she stopped; rather she commanded, and swept me along.

"Don't you want to take a walk, Mr. Soames? You'd better do it now, because we'll be rolling scuppers under by and by."

For making her acquaintance it was too good an opportunity to miss. In spite of my inability to play up to her gay cheerfulness I found myself strolling along beside her.

I may say at once that I never met a human being with whom I was more instantly on terms of confidence. The sketch of her life which she gave me without a second's hesitation came in response to my remark that from her questions to me at table I judged her to have traveled.

"I was born on the road, and I suppose I shall never get off it. My father and mother had got hitched to a theatrical troupe on tour."

A distaste acquired as a little girl on tour had kept her from trying her fortunes on the boards. She had an idea that her father was acting still, though after his divorce from her mother they had lost sight of him. Her mother had died six years previously, since which time she had looked after herself, with some ups and downs of experience. She had been a dressmaker, a milliner, and a model, with no more liking for any of these professions than she had for the theatrical. In winding up this brief narrative she astounded me with the statement:

"And now I'm going to be an adventuress."

"A what?" I stopped in the middle of the deck to stare at her.

She repeated the obnoxious noun, continuing to walk on.

"But I thought you were a stenographer."

"That's part of it. I'm deceiving poor Miss Averill. She's my dupe. I make use of people in that wayand throw them aside."

"But doing the work for Doctor Averill in the mean time."

"Oh, that's just a pretext."

"A pretext for what?"

"For being an adventuress. Goodness knows what evil I shall do in that family before I get out of it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, well, you'll see. If you're born balefulwell, you've just got to be baleful; that's all. Did you ever hear of an adventuress who didn't wreck homes?"

I said I had not much experience with adventuresses, and didn't quite know the point of their occupation.

"Well, you stay around where I am and you'll see."

"Have you wrecked many homes up to the present?" I ventured to inquire.

"This is the first one I ever had a chance at. I only decided to be an adventuress about the time when Miss Averill came along."

That, it seemed, had been at the Settlement, to which Miss Blair had retired after some trying situations as a model. Stenography being taught at the Settlement, she had taken it up on hearing of several authenticated cases of girls who had gone into offices and married millionaires. The discouraging side presented itself later in the many more cases of girls who had not been so successful. It was in this interval of depression on the part of Miss Blair that Mildred Averill had appeared at the Settlement with all sorts of anxious plans about doing good, "If she wants to do good to any one, let her do it to me," Miss Blair had said to her intimates. "I'm all ready to be adopted by any old maid that's got the wad." That, she explained to me, was not the language she habitually used. It was mere pleasantry between girls, and not up to the standard of a really high-class adventuress. Moreover, Miss Averill was not an old maid, seeing she was but twenty-five, though she got herself up like forty.

All the same, Miss Averill having come on the scene and having taken a fancy to Miss Blair, Miss Blair had decided to use Miss Averill for her own malignant purposes.

For by this time the seeming stenographer had chosen her career. A sufficient course of reading had made it clear that of all the women in the world the adventuress had the best of it. She went to the smartest dressmakers; she stayed at the dearest hotels; her jewels and furs rivaled those of duchesses; her life was the perpetual third act of a play. Furthermore, Miss Blair had yet to hear of an adventuress who didn't end in money, marriage, and respectability.

Having been so frank about herself, I could hardly be surprised when she became equally so about me. As the wind rose she slipped into a protected angle, where I had no choice but to follow her. She began her attack after propping herself in the corner, her hands deep in her pockets, and her pretty shoulders hunched.

"You're a funny man. Do you know it?"

Though inwardly aghast, I strove to conceal my agitation. "Funny in what way?"

"Oh, every way. Any one would think"

"What would any one think?" I insisted, nervously, when she paused.

"Oh, well! I sha'n't say."

"Because you're afraid to hurt my feelings?"

"I'm a good sortespecially among people of our own class. For the others"she shrugged her shoulders charmingly"I'm an anarchist and a socialist and all that. I don't care who I bring down, if they're up. But when people are down alreadyI'mI'm a friend."

As there was a measure of invitation in these words I nerved myself to approach the personal.

"Are you friend enough to tell me why you thought you had seen me in Salt Lake City?"

She nodded. "Sure; because I did think sothereor somewhere."

"Then you couldn't swear to the place?"

"I couldn't swear to the place; but I could to you. I never forget a face if I give it the twice-over. The once-overwell, then I may. But if I've studied a manthe least little bitI've got him for the rest of my life."

"But why should you have studied meassuming that it was me?"

"Assuming that that water's the ocean, I study it because there's nothing else to look at. We were opposite each other at two tables in a restaurant."

"Was there nobody there but just you and me?"

"Yes, there was a lady."

My heart gave a thump. "At your table or at mine?"

"At yours."

"Did she"I was aware of the foolish wording of the question without being able to put it in any other way"did she have large dark eyes?"

"Not in the back of her head, which was all I saw of her."

Once more I expressed myself stupidly. "Did youdid you think it wasmy wifeor just a friend?"

She burst out laughing. "How could I tell? You speak as if you didn't know. You're certainly the queerest kid"

I tried to recover my lost ground. "I do know, but"

"Then what are you asking me for?"

"Because you seem to have watched me"

"I didn't watch you," she denied, indignantly. "The idea! You sure have your nerve with you. I couldn't help seeing a guy that was right under my eyes, could I? Besides which"

"Yes? Besides which?" I insisted.

She brought the words out with an air of chaffing embarrassment. "Well, you weren't got up as you are now. Do you know it?"

As I reddened and stammered something about the war, she laid her hand on my arm soothingly.

"There now! There now! That's all right. I never give any one away. You can see for yourself that I can't have knocked about the world like I've done without running up against this sort of thing a good many times"

"What sort of thing?"

"Oh, well, if you don't know I needn't tell you. But I'm your friend, kid. That's all I want you to know. It's why I told you about myself. I wanted you to see that we're all in the same boat. Harry Drinkwater's your friend, too. He likes you. You stick by us and we'll stick by you and see the thing through."

It was on my lips to say, "What thing?" but she rattled on again.

"Only you can't wear that sort of clothes and get away with it, kid. Do you know it? Another fellow might, but you simply can't. It shows you up at the first glance. The night you came on board you might just as well have marched in carrying a blue silk banner. For Heaven's sake, if you've got anything else in your kit go and put it on."

"I haven't."

"Haven't? What on earth have you done with all the swell things you must have had? Burned 'em?"

The question was so direct, and the good-will behind it so evident, that I felt I must give an answer. "Sold them."

"Got down to that, did you? What do you know? Poor little kid! Funny, isn't it? A woman can carry that sort of thing off nine times out often; but a fat-head of a man"

She kept the sentence suspended while gazing over my shoulder. The lips remained parted as in uttering the last word. I was about to turn to see what so entranced her, when she said, in a tone of awe or joy, I was not sure which:

"There's that poor little blind boy coming down the deck all by himself. You'll excuse me, won't you, if I run and help him?"

So she ran.