"
The voice was a woman's, low, musical, and irate; and Tom turned quickly.
It was the afternoon of the first day out. For the first time in his life Tom was away from his native, Northwestern heath and confronted by a scene that was not framed by lanky pine and frayed, ribbed rock, by rolling sage land and green-thundering waterfall, studded with little towns set flat, like jewels, into the surrounding plains and straddling in an arrogant, devil-may-care manner in all the cardinal points of the compass, as if to advertise to newcomers fresh from the East that, if they would but wait a year or two, the town would fill up and grow to the next range, and even beyond.
For the first time in his life Tom felt the lap and surge of salt water beneath his feet and so he had been leaning over the top deck rail looking over the great Atlantic that chopped towards the crooked, peaked sky line with an immense roll; and, the ship giving a ruffianly lurch at the same moment, he nearly lost his balance and fell on the plank deck when he recognized the speaker's face.
"Well! Bertha! I'll be eternally razzle-dazzled!"
He held out a big, honest hand to Miss Wedekind, who stood there, dressed in short plaid skirt, low-heeled brown shoes, tweed hat, and a silk blazer of gold and black stripes.
She waved the proffered hand aside. Her violet eyes eddied up with a slow flame of anger.
"I don't want to shake hands with you!" she said.
"Eh?" Tom Graves did not believe his ears. "Aren't you glad to see a face from home? Why, say, I am plumb tickled to see you.
The girl stamped her foot.
"I am—oh—angry!" she cried. "Frightfully angry! What do you mean by persecuting me, by following me when you know you are not wanted?"
"Me—persecute—you?" stammered Tom. "Me—follow—you?"
"Exactly! Don't play the stupid! I took the first train for New York, the first steamship out of New York, as soon as Uncle Heinrich cabled that his mother, my grandmother, was sick, near death, and wanted to see me once more. And here you … Have you no shame, no decency?"
"Say, Bertha," stammered Tom. "Honest to God, I don't know anything of what you're saying. I guess I left Spokane a few days before you did. Why, I spent half a week in New York, just fretting and fuming to get away. Didn't your father tell you?"
"He did not! And I don't believe you! No, I do not! You are insufferable. Can't you take no for an answer? Do you think, do you imagine for a moment, that you can win me by such silly, ill-bred, rude persecution? Do you think you can bully me into marrying you? Haven't you got any more manhood than that?"
"Look here, Bertha …"
"You heard what I said, Tom Graves. And if you dare say a word to me on board this ship, if you as much as smile at me, I am going to complain to the captain. There!" and she swept off while he looked after her, cap in hand, scratching his red hair, amazement and grief and hurt pride in his honest features, finally relieving his injured feelings by a tremendous:
"Well, I'll be …"
"I say! Don't speak out your thoughts so freely, my dear sir!" Another voice came to his ear, a man's voice this time and frankly, aggressively British. "Never say you'll be damned or anything as rash as that before you've tried some of that ripping medicine against it they sell down across the saloon bar, what?"
Tom looked up.
The speaker was a young man about his own age, his own height, though a little broader. His hair (he wore his cap in his hand) was honey-colored and neatly parted down the center; his sack suit was tightly tailored and of an extravagant, hairy, green Harris tweed; his heavy brogues were topped by brown cloth spats; and his face, round, rosy, blue-eyed, open, was ornamented by a tiny mustache and an immense, gold-rimmed monocle.
The final seal to this typical specimen of traveling Briton was given by a short briar pipe clamped be tween his teeth; and when Tom Graves looked at him, dazed, rather overcome, the Englishman continued:
"My name's Vyvyan, if you want to stand upon ceremonies," giving him his card.
Tom took it and read thereon:
"Mr.—Bury St-Edmonds?" stammered Tom.
"Gad, no! That's my address, home in England. Vyvyan—that's my name!"
"Oh—mine's Graves—Tom Graves!"
Now, for the excuse of the young Westerner, be it said that all his life, though he had met plenty of Englishmen, in the Inland Empire, he had been familiar only with the two types who abound there: the English worker, and the English wastrel.