One Day's Courtship by Robert Barr (simple ebook reader .txt) 📖

illustrated papers. He was older than the pictures made him appear, and there was a certain querulous expression on his face which was also absent in the portraits. He glanced into the state-room, looked for a moment through Buel, and then turned to the steward.

"What do you mean by putting that portmanteau into my room?"

"This gentleman has the upper berth, sir."

"Nonsense. The entire room is mine. Take the portmanteau out."

The steward hesitated, looking from one to the other.

"The ticket is for 159, sir," he said at last.

"Then there is some mistake. The room is mine. Don't have me ask you again to remove the portmanteau."

"Perhaps you would like to see the purser, sir."

"I have nothing to do with the purser. Do as I tell you."

All this time he had utterly ignored Buel, whose colour was rising. The young man said quietly to the steward, "Take out the portmanteau, please."

When it was placed in the passage, Hodden entered the room, shut and bolted the door.

"Will you see the purser, sir?" said the steward in an awed whisper.

"I think so. There is doubtless some mistake, as he says."

The purser was busy allotting seats at the tables, and Buel waited patiently. He had no friends on board, and did not care where he was placed.

When the purser was at liberty, the steward explained to him the difficulty which had arisen. The official looked at his list.

"159--Buel. Is that your name, sir? Very good; 160--Hodden. That is the gentleman now in the room. Well, what is the trouble?"

"Mr. Hodden says, sir, that the room belongs to him."

"Have you seen his ticket?"

"No, sir."

"Then bring it to me."

"Mistakes sometimes happen, Mr. Buel," said the purser, when the steward vanished. "But as a general thing I find that people simply claim what they have no right to claim. Often the agents promise that if possible a passenger shall have a room to himself, and when we can do so we let him have it. I try to please everybody; but all the steamers crossing to America are full at this season of the year, and it is not practicable to give every one the whole ship to himself. As the Americans say, some people want the earth for L12 or L15, and we can't always give it to them. Ah, here is the ticket. It is just as I thought. Mr. Hodden is entitled merely to berth 160."

The arrival of the ticket was quickly followed by the advent of Mr. Hodden himself. He still ignored Buel.

"Your people in London," he said to the purser, "guaranteed me a room to myself. Otherwise I would not have come on this line. Now it seems that another person has been put in with me. I must protest against this kind of usage."

"Have you any letter from them guaranteeing the room?" asked the purser blandly.

"No. I supposed until now that their word was sufficient."

"Well, you see, I am helpless in this case. These two tickets are exactly the same with the exception of the numbers. Mr. Buel has just as much right to insist on being alone in the room as far as the tickets go, and I have had no instructions in the matter."

"But it is an outrage that they should promise me one thing in London, and then refuse to perform it, when I am helpless on the ocean."

"If they have done so--"

"_If_ they have done so? Do you doubt my word, sir?"

"Oh, not at all, sir, not at all," answered the purser in his most conciliatory tone. "But in that case your ticket should have been marked 159-160."

"I am not to suffer for their blunders."

"I see by this list that you paid L12 for your ticket. Am I right?"

"That was the amount, I believe. I paid what I was asked to pay."

"Quite so, sir. Well, you see, that is the price of one berth only. Mr. Buel, here, paid the same amount."

"Come to the point. Do I understand you to refuse to remedy the mistake (to put the matter in its mildest form) of your London people?"

"I do not refuse. I would be only too glad to give you the room to yourself, if it were possible. Unfortunately, it is not possible. I assure you there is not an unoccupied state-room on the ship."

"Then I will see the captain. Where shall I find him?"

"Very good, sir. Steward, take Mr. Hodden to the captain's room."

When they were alone again Buel very contritely expressed his sorrow at having been the innocent cause of so much trouble to the purser.

"Bless you, sir, I don't mind it in the least. This is a very simple case. Where both occupants of a room claim it all to themselves, and where both are angry and abuse me at the same time, then it gets a bit lively. I don't envy him his talk with the captain. If the old man happens to be feeling a little grumpy today, and he most generally does at the beginning of the voyage, Mr. Hodden will have a bad ten minutes. Don't you bother a bit about it, sir, but go down to your room and make yourself at home. It will be all right."

Mr. Hodden quickly found that the appeal to Caesar was not well timed. The captain had not the suave politeness of the purser. There may be greater and more powerful men on earth than the captain of an ocean liner, but you can't get any seafaring man to believe it, and the captains themselves are rarely without a due sense of their own dignity. The man who tries to bluff the captain of a steamship like the _Geranium_ has a hard row to hoe. Mr. Hodden descended to his state-room in a more subdued frame of mind than when he went on the upper deck. However, he still felt able to crush his unfortunate room-mate.

"You insist, then," he said, speaking to Buel for the first time, "on occupying this room?"

"I have no choice in the matter."

"I thought perhaps you might feel some hesitation in forcing yourself in where you were so evidently not wanted?"

The hero-worshipper in Buel withered, and the natural Englishman asserted itself.

"I have exactly the same right in this room that you have. I claim no privilege which I have not paid for."

"Do you wish to suggest that I have made such a claim?"

"I suggest nothing; I state it. You _have_ made such a claim, and in a most offensive manner."

"Do you understand the meaning of the language you are using, sir? You are calling me a liar."

"You put it very tersely, Mr. Hodden. Thank you. Now, if you venture to address me again during this voyage, I shall be obliged if you keep a civil tongue in your head."

"Good heavens! _You_ talk of civility?" cried the astonished man, aghast.

His room-mate went to the upper deck. In the next state-room pretty Miss Carrie Jessop clapped her small hands silently together. The construction of staterooms is such that every word uttered in one above the breath is audible in the next room; Miss Jessop could not help hearing the whole controversy, from the time the steward was ordered so curtly to remove the portmanteau, until the culmination of the discussion and the evident defeat of Mr. Hodden. Her sympathy was all with the other fellow, at that moment unknown, but a sly peep past the edge of the scarcely opened door told her that the unnamed party in the quarrel was the awkward young man who had found her book. She wondered if the Hodden mentioned could possibly be the author, and, with a woman's inconsistency, felt sure that she would detest the story, as if the personality of the writer had anything whatever to do with his work. She took down the parcel from the shelf and undid the string. Her eyes opened wide as she looked at the title.

"Well I never!" she gasped. "If I haven't robbed that poor, innocent young man of a book he bought for himself! Attempted eviction by his room-mate, and bold highway robbery by an unknown woman! No, it's worse than that; it's piracy, for it happened on the high seas." And the girl laughed softly to herself.


CHAPTER III.

Kenan Buel walked the deck alone in the evening light, and felt that he ought to be enjoying the calmness and serenity of the ocean expanse around him after the noise and squalor of London; but now that the excitement of the recent quarrel was over, he felt the reaction, and his natural diffidence led him to blame himself. Most of the passengers were below, preparing for dinner, and he had the deck to himself. As he turned on one of his rounds, he saw approaching him the girl of Euston Station, as he mentally termed her. She had his book in her hand.

"I have come to beg your pardon," she said. "I see it was your own book I took from you to-day."

"My own book!" cried Buel, fearing she had somehow discovered his guilty secret.

"Yes. Didn't you buy this for yourself?" She held up the volume.

"Oh, certainly. But you are quite welcome to it, I am sure."

"I couldn't think of taking it away from you before you have read it."

"But I have read it," replied Buel, eagerly: "and I shall be very pleased to lend it to you."

"Indeed? And how did you manage to read it without undoing the parcel?"

"That is to say I--I skimmed over it before it was done up," he said in confusion. The clear eyes of the girl disconcerted him, and, whatever his place in fiction is now, he was at that time a most unskilful liar.

"You see, I bought it because it is written by a namesake of mine. My name is Buel, and I happened to notice that was the name on the book; in fact, if you remember, when you were looking over it at the stall, the clerk mentioned the author's name, and that naturally caught my attention."

The girl glanced with renewed interest at the volume.

"Was this the book I was looking at? The story I bought was Hodden's latest. I found it a moment ago down in my state-room, so it was not lost after all."

They were now walking together as if they were old acquaintances, the girl still holding the volume in her hand.

"By the way," she said innocently, "I see on the passenger list that there is a Mr. Hodden on board. L>o you think he can be the novelist?"

"I believe he is," answered Buel, stiffly.

"Oh, that will be too jolly for anything. I would _so_ like to meet him. I am sure he must be a most charming man. His books show such insight into human nature, such sympathy and noble purpose. There could be nothing petty or mean about such a man."

"I--I--suppose not."

"Why, of course there couldn't. You have read his books, have you not?"

"All of them except his latest."

"Well, I'll lend you that, as you have been so kind as to offer me the reading of this one."

"Thank you. After you have read it