Jimmy was in a mood of exaltation. He had passed the last few days in a condition of intermittent melancholy, consequent on the discovery that he was not the only man on board the Atlantic who desired the society of Ann as an alleviation of the tedium of an ocean voyage. The world, when he embarked on this venture, had consisted so exclusively of Ann and himself that, until the ship was well on its way to Queenstown, he had not conceived the possibility of intrusive males forcing their unwelcome attentions on her. And it had added bitterness to the bitter awakening that their attentions did not appear to be at all unwelcome. Almost immediately after breakfast on the very first day, a creature with a small black moustache and shining teeth had descended upon Ann and, vocal with surprise and pleasure at meeting her again—he claimed, damn him!, to have met her before at Palm Beach, Bar Harbor, and a dozen other places—had carried her off to play an idiotic game known as shuffle-board. Nor was this an isolated case. It began to be borne in upon Jimmy that Ann, whom he had looked upon purely in the light of an Eve playing opposite his Adam in an exclusive Garden of Eden, was an extremely well-known and popular character. The clerk at the shipping-office had lied absurdly when he had said that very few people were crossing on the Atlantic this voyage. The vessel was crammed till its sides bulged, it was loaded down in utter defiance of the Plimsoll law, with Rollos and Clarences and Dwights and Twombleys who had known and golfed and ridden and driven and motored and swum and danced with Ann for years. A ghastly being entitled Edgar Something or Teddy Something had beaten Jimmy by a short head in the race for the deck-steward, the prize of which was the placing of his deck-chair next to Ann's. Jimmy had been driven from the promenade deck by the spectacle of this beastly creature lying swathed in rugs reading best-sellers to her.
He had scarcely seen her to speak to since the beginning of the voyage. When she was not walking with Rolly or playing shuffle-board with Twombley, she was down below ministering to the comfort of a chronically sea-sick aunt, referred to in conversation as "poor aunt Nesta". Sometimes Jimmy saw the little man—presumably her uncle—in the smoking-room, and once he came upon the stout boy recovering from the effects of a cigar in a quiet corner of the boat-deck: but apart from these meetings the family was as distant from him as if he had never seen Ann at all—let alone saved her life.
And now she had dropped down on him from heaven. They were alone together with the good clean wind and the bracing scud. Rollo, Clarence, Dwight, and Twombley, not to mention Edgar or possibly Teddy, were down below—he hoped, dying. They had the world to themselves.
"I love rough weather," said Ann, lifting her face to the wind. Her eyes were very bright. She was beyond any doubt or question the only girl on earth. "Poor aunt Nesta doesn't. She was bad enough when it was quite calm, but this storm has finished her. I've just been down below, trying to cheer her up."
Jimmy thrilled at the picture. Always fascinating, Ann seemed to him at her best in the role of ministering angel. He longed to tell her so, but found no words. They reached the end of the deck, and turned. Ann looked up at him.
"I've hardly seen anything of you since we sailed," she said. She spoke almost reproachfully. "Tell me all about yourself, Mr. Bayliss. Why are you going to America?"
Jimmy had had an impassioned indictment of the Rollos on his tongue, but she had closed the opening for it as quickly as she had made it. In face of her direct demand for information he could not hark back to it now. After all, what did the Rollos matter? They had no part in this little wind-swept world: they were where they belonged, in some nether hell on the C. or D. deck, moaning for death.
"To make a fortune, I hope," he said.
Ann was pleased at this confirmation of her diagnosis. She had deduced this from the evidence at Paddington Station.
"How pleased your father will be if you do!"
The slight complexity of Jimmy's affairs caused him to pause for a moment to sort out his fathers, but an instant's reflection told him that she must be referring to Bayliss the butler.
"Yes."
"He's a dear old man," said Ann. "I suppose he's very proud of you?"
"I hope so."
"You must do tremendously well in America, so as not to disappoint him. What are you thinking of doing?"
Jimmy considered for a moment.
"Newspaper work, I think."
"Oh? Why, have you had any experience?"
"A little."
Ann seemed to grow a little aloof, as if her enthusiasm had been damped.
"Oh, well, I suppose it's a good enough profession. I'm not very fond of it myself. I've only met one newspaper man in my life, and I dislike him very much, so I suppose that has prejudiced me."
"Who was that?"
"You wouldn't have met him. He was on an American paper. A man named Crocker."
A sudden gust of wind drove them back a step, rendering talk impossible. It covered a gap when Jimmy could not have spoken. The shock of the information that Ann had met him before made him dumb. This thing was beyond him. It baffled him.
Her next words supplied a solution. They were under shelter of one of the boats now and she could make herself heard.
"It was five years ago, and I only met him for a very short while, but the prejudice has lasted."
Jimmy began to understand. Five years ago! It was not so strange, then, that they should not recognise each other now. He stirred up his memory. Nothing came to the surface. Not a gleam of recollection of that early meeting rewarded him. And yet something of importance must have happened then, for her to remember it. Surely his mere personality could not have been so unpleasant as to have made such a lasting impression on her!
"I wish you could do something better than newspaper work," said Ann. "I always think the splendid part about America is that it is such a land of adventure. There are such millions of chances. It's a place where anything may happen. Haven't you an adventurous soul, Mr. Bayliss?"
No man lightly submits to a charge, even a hinted charge, of being deficient in the capacity for adventure.
"Of course I have," said Jimmy indignantly. "I'm game to tackle anything that comes along."
"I'm glad of that."
Her feeling of comradeship towards this young man deepened. She loved adventure and based her estimate of any member of the opposite sex largely on his capacity for it. She moved in a set, when at home, which was more polite than adventurous, and had frequently found the atmosphere enervating.
"Adventure," said Jimmy, "is everything."
He paused. "Or a good deal," he concluded weakly.
"Why qualify it like that? It sounds so tame. Adventure is the biggest thing in life."
It seemed to Jimmy that he had received an excuse for a remark of a kind that had been waiting for utterance ever since he had met her. Often and often in the watches of the night, smoking endless pipes and thinking of her, he had conjured up just such a vision as this—they two walking the deserted deck alone, and she innocently giving him an opening for some low-voiced, tender speech, at which she would start, look at him quickly, and then ask him haltingly if the words had any particular application. And after that—oh, well, all sorts of things might happen. And now the moment had come. It was true that he had always pictured the scene as taking place by moonlight and at present there was a half-gale blowing, out of an inky sky; also on the present occasion anything in the nature of a low-voiced speech was absolutely out of the question owing to the uproar of the elements. Still, taking these drawbacks into consideration, the chance was far too good to miss. Such an opening might never happen again. He waited till the ship had steadied herself after an apparently suicidal dive into an enormous roller, then, staggering back to her side, spoke.