Consequently, for a while he rarely went across the bridge which spanned the opening between the two decks. It may be that he had a certain amount of reluctance to encounter Mrs. Edward Ruggles.
The roof of the second cabin deck-house was, when there was not too much wind, a favorite place with him. It was not much frequented, as most of those who spent their time on deck apparently preferred a place nearer amidships. He was sitting there on the morning of the fifth day out, looking idly over the sea, with an occasional glance at the people who were walking on the promenade-deck below, or leaning on the rail which bounded it. He turned at a slight sound behind him, and rose with his hat in his hand. The flush in his face, as he took the hand which was offered him, reflected the color in the face of the owner, but the grayish brown eyes, which he remembered so well, looked into his, a little curiously, perhaps, but frankly and kindly. She was the first to speak.
“How do you do, Mr. Lenox?” she said.
“How do you do, Mrs. Ruggles?” said John, throwing up his hand as, at the moment of his reply, a puff of wind blew the cape of his mackintosh over his head. They both laughed a little (this was their greeting after nearly six years), and sat down.
“What a nice place!” she said, looking about her.
“Yes,” said John; “I sit here a good deal when it isn’t too windy.”
“I have been wondering why I did not get a sight of you,” she said. “I saw your name in the passenger list. Have you been ill?”
“I’m in the second cabin,” he said, smiling.
She looked at him a little incredulously, and he explained.
“Ah, yes,” she said, “I saw your name, but as you did not appear in the dining saloon, I thought you must either be ill or that you did not sail. Did you know that I was on board?” she asked.
It was rather an embarrassing question.
“I have been intending,” he replied rather lamely, “to make myself known to you—that is, to—well, make my presence on board known to you. I got just a glimpse of you before we sailed, when you came up to speak to a man who had been saying goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles. I heard him speak their name, and looking over the passenger list I identified you as Mrs. Edward Ruggles.”
“Ah,” she said, looking away for an instant, “I did not know that you had seen me, and I wondered how you came to address me as Mrs. Ruggles just now.”
“That was how,” said John; and then, after a moment, “it seems rather odd, doesn’t it, that we should be renewing an acquaintance on an ocean steamer as we did once before, so many years ago? and that the first bit of intelligence that I have had of you in all the years since I saw you last should come to me through the passenger list?”
“Did you ever try to get any?” she asked. “I have always thought it very strange that we should never have heard anything about you.”
“I went to the house once, some weeks after you had gone,” said John, “but the man in charge was out, and the maid could tell me nothing.”
“A note I wrote you at the time of your father’s death,” she said, “we found in my small nephew’s overcoat pocket after we had been some time in California; but I wrote a second one before we left New York, telling you of our intended departure, and where we were going.”
“I never received it,” he said. Neither spoke for a while, and then:
“Tell me of your sister and brother-in-law,” he said.
“My sister is at present living in Cambridge, where Jack is at college,” was the reply; “but poor Julius died two years ago.”
“Ah,” said John, “I am grieved to hear of Mr. Carling’s death. I liked him very much.”
“He liked you very much,” she said, “and often spoke of you.”
There was another period of silence, so long, indeed, as to be somewhat embarrassing. None of the thoughts which followed each other in John’s mind was of the sort which he felt like broaching. He realized that the situation was getting awkward, and that consciousness added to the confusion of his ideas. But if his companion shared his embarrassment, neither her face nor her manner betrayed it as at last she said, turning, and looking frankly at him:
“You seem very little changed. Tell me about yourself. Tell me something of your life in the last six years.”
During the rest of the voyage they were together for a part of every day, sometimes with the company of Mrs. William Ruggles, but more often without it, as her husband claimed much of her attention and rarely came on deck; and John, from time to time, gave his companion pretty much the whole history of his later career. But with regard to her own life, and, as he noticed, especially the two years since the death of her brother-in-law, she was distinctly reticent. She never spoke of her marriage or her husband, and after one or two faintly tentative allusions, John forebore to touch upon those subjects, and was driven to conclude that her experience had not been a happy one. Indeed, in their intercourse there were times when she appeared distrait and even moody; but on the whole she seemed to him to be just as he
