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Her arms came down slowly, her chin lowered; her pose, if you will, melted away. Her voice when she spoke was low and round and thrilled, and it sent an answering thrill through Harber. "I'm mad!" she said. "Moon-mad or tropic-mad. I didn't hear you. I was worshipping the night!" "As I have been," said Harber, feeling a sudden pagan kinship with her mood.
That was the last Harber saw of him for five days. The weather had turned rough, and he supposed the poor fellow was seasick, and thought of him sympathetically, but let it rest there. Then, one evening after dinner, the steward came for him and said that Mr. Clay Barton wanted to see him. Harber followed to Barton's stateroom, which the sick man was occupying alone.
"Only that I knew you were here, having heard of you from the Tretheways, and I'd accounted for every one else. I couldn't stay inside because it seemed to me that it was wicked when I had come so far for just this, to be inside stuffily dancing. One can dance all the rest of one's life in Michigan, you know! So " "It's the better place to be out here," said Harber abruptly. "Need we go in?"
Afterwards there were questions, and a report by Miss Harber, a middle-aged lady with glasses who was the secretary. Honora looked around her. The membership of the Society, judging by those present, was surely of a sufficiently heterogeneous character to satisfy even the catholic tastes of her hostess.
When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot The power of suction to resist, And claret-bottles harber not Such dimples as would hold your fist, When publishers no longer steal, And pay for what they stole before, When the first locomotive's wheel Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore;
Barton made a vehement sign of affirmation. "Why, she'll be terribly sorry for you, but she won't care," concluded Harber. "I mean, she'll be waiting for you, and glad to have you coming home, so glad that...." "Ah ... yes. That's what ... I haven't mentioned the fever in writing to her, you see. It will be a shock." Harber, looking at him, thought that it would, indeed.
Picture that scene, if you will. What would you have said? Harber saw leaping up before him, with terrible clarity, as if it were etched upon his mind, that night in Tawnleytown ten years before. It was as if Barton, in his semidelirium, were reading the words from his past! "I won't let you fail! ... half a loaf ... the bravest adventures ... the yellowest gold." Incredible thing!
"'Sall up!" said Barton, grinning gamely. "I'm through. Asked 'em to send you in. Do something for me, Harber tha's right, ain't it Harber's your name?" "Yes. What is it, Barton?" Barton closed his eyes, then opened them again. "Doggone memory playin' tricks," he apologized faintly. "This, Harber. Black-leather case inside leather grip there by the wall. Money in it and letters.
Harber says they talked all that afternoon and evening, and well into the next morning, enthusiastically finding one another the veritable salt of the earth, honourable, level-headed, congenial, temperamentally fitted for exactly what they had in mind partnership. "How much can you put in?" asked Harber finally. "Five hundred pounds," said the captain. "I can match you," said Harber.
In the passageway near the door, he met the ship's doctor. "Mr. Harber?" said the doctor. "Your friend in there I'm sorry to say is " "I suspected as much," said Harber. "He knows it himself, I think." "Does he?" said the doctor, obviously relieved. "Well, I hope that he'll live till we get him ashore. There's just a chance, of course, though his fever is very high now.
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