Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Courtship -- Fiction; Love stories
He went to bed, and was so worn out that he fell asleep and began to
dream. A face came up out of the sea, and brooded over the waters, as in
that picture of Vedder's which he calls “Memory,” but the hair was not
blond; it was the colour of those phosphorescent flames, and the eyes
were like it. “Horrible! horrible!” he tried to shriek, but he cried,
“Alice, I love you.” There was a burglar in the room, and he was running
after Miss Pasmer. Mavering caught him, and tried to beat him; his fists
fell like bolls of cotton; the burglar drew his breath in with a long,
washing sound like water.
Mavering woke deathly sick, and heard the sweep of the waves. The boat
was pitching frightfully. He struggled out into the saloon, and saw that
it was five o'clock. In five hours more it would be a day since he told
Alice that he loved her; it now seemed very improbable. There were a
good many half-dressed people in the saloon, and a woman came running
out of her state-room straight to Mavering. She was in her stocking
feet, and her hair hung down her back.
“Oh! are we going down?” she implored him. “Have we struck? Oughtn't we
to pray--somebody? Shall I wake the children?”
“Mavering reassured her, and told her there was no danger.
“Well, then,” she said, “I'll go back for my shoes.”
“Yes, better get your shoes.”
The saloon rose round him and sank. He controlled his sickness by
planting a chair in the centre and sitting in it with his eyes shut. As
he grew more comfortable he reflected how he had calmed that woman, and
he resolved again to spend his life in doing good. “Yes, that's the only
ticket,” he said to himself, with involuntary frivolity. He thought
of what the officer had said, and he helplessly added, “Circus
ticket--reserved seat.” Then he began again, and loaded himself with
execration.
The boat got into Portland at nine o'clock, and Mavering left her,
taking his hand-bag with him, and letting his trunk go on to Boston.
The officer who received his ticket at the gangplank noticed the
destination on it, and said, “Got enough?”
“Yes, for one while.” Mavering recognised his acquaintance of the night
before.
“Don't like picnics very much.”
“No,” said Mavering, with abysmal gloom. “They don't agree with me.
Never did.” He was aware of trying to make his laugh bitter. The officer
did not notice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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