Sonnie-Boy's PeopleConnolly, James B. (James Brendan)
General
Sonnie-Boy's People
Connolly, James B. (James Brendan)
Sea stories; Short stories, American
"I 'ave no idea, sir. Orders, sir. I was to hinform the saloon passengers
as how they were to go on deck, and women and children into boats."
"All right. Thank you. And, Hames."
"Yes, sir?"
"You hunt up Miss Huttle's maid, and have her tell Miss Huttle to be
sure to wrap up warm. Be sure she gets that right--to wrap up warm. Two
sets of everything all round. Got that right?"
"Two sets--yes, sir."
"That's all, Hames."
"'K you, sir."
He resumed writing:
And so it has come to write the adieu which I would dread to have
to speak. Four days only have I known you, but a man may build his
life anew in four days, and this last adventure of mine has been
such as in my visionary boyhood days I used to mark out for myself
in rosy dreams.
I have the little snapshot you gave me yesterday. I will have it
with me to the end, and your face in it will be the last thing I
kiss this side of eternity. And so good-by, dear heart, and don't
worry for me. Who lives by the sword, et cetera. It had to come to
some such ending, I suppose, though rather a joke, isn't it, to be
lost on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic in these days?
To-day with you I saw the sun go down 'twixt purple bars, and what
is the little matter of dying to that? And it is a consolation to
know you will not mourn me. Good night, dear heart, and may God
have ever a tender eye on you.
He sealed the envelope, and very carefully addressed it: "Miss Helen
Huttle," placed it in his inside coat-pocket, kissed the little
photograph, and placed that also in his inside coat-pocket.
He gazed about to see what else. His top-coat lay where he had last
thrown it--across the edge of the berth. He shook his head at it, and
from his wardrobe took a heavy ulster, scanned it approvingly and put it
on. He hauled his steamer trunk out from under his berth, and from a
corner of it dragged a thick wallet. He ran his thumb along the edge of
the bills within it. Large banknotes they were mostly. He stuck the
wallet into his hip pocket. The handle of a magazine pistol peeped up at
him. He took it up, laid it flat in the palm of his hand, shook his
head, and tossed it back. He took one more look around the room, waved
his hand to the walls, and stepped out into the passageway.
A hurrying steward almost bumped into him. It was Hames. "Miss Huttle
was told, sir."
"Good! Now, something else. Later on Miss Huttle will be going into a
boat. Before she goes, be sure you give her this letter. Not now--no.
But up on deck, just before she goes."
"Yes, sir."
Cadogan sought the upper deck by way of the second-cabin quarters. On
the wide staircase he overtook an old couple who, at sight of him, began
talking volubly. She was a little old lady with a confiding smile, and
he a bent and round-backed man with a long, forked beard.
"Vot you t'ink, Mr. Cadogan? He tell me I shell go in der boads."
"And why not, Mrs. Weiscopf?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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