The Looker-On
by
I
“Oh, I’m going to be Lady Jane Grey,” said Charlie Cleveland, balancing himself on the deck-rail in front of his friends, Mrs. Langdale and Mollie Erle, with considerable agility. “And, Mollie, I say, will you lend me a black silk skirt? I saw you were wearing one last night.”
He spoke with complete seriousness. It was this boy’s way to infuse into all his actions an enthusiasm that deprived the most trifling of the commonplace element. He was the gayest passenger on board–the very life of the boat. Yet he had few accomplishments to recommend him, his abundant spirits alone attaining for him the popularity he everywhere enjoyed.
Molly Erle, who with Mrs. Langdale was returning home after spending the winter with some friends at Calcutta, regarded him with a toleration not wholly devoid of contempt. He apparently deemed it necessary to pay her a good deal of attention, and Molly was strongly determined to keep him at a distance–a matter, by the way, that had its difficulties in face of young Cleveland’s romping lack of ceremony.
“Yes, you may have the skirt,” she said with a generosity not wholly spontaneous, as he waited expectantly for a reply to his request.
“Ah, good!” he said effusively. “That is a great weight off my mind. And may I have Number Ten on your programme?”
“Are you going to dance?” asked Mrs. Langdale, with a half-suppressed laugh.
He turned upon her, grinning openly.
“No. Fisher says I mustn’t. I’m going to sit out, dear Mrs. Langdale–a modest wall-flower for once. I hope you will all be very kind to me. Have you made a note of Number Ten, Molly–I mean, Miss Erle? No? But you will, though. Ah! Thanks, awfully! Here comes Fisher! I wish you would persuade him to do Guildford Dudley. I can’t.”
He bounced off the rail and departed, laughing.
Molly looked after him with slight disapprobation on her pretty face. He was such a thoroughly nice boy. She wished with almost unreasonable intensity that he possessed more of that sterling quality, solidity, for which his travelling companion, Fisher, was chiefly noteworthy.
Captain Fisher approached them with a casual air as if he had drifted their way by accident. He was one of those oppressively quiet men who possess the unhappy knack of appearing wholly out of touch with all social surroundings. There was a reticence about him which almost all took for surliness, but which was in reality merely a somewhat unattractive mixture of awkwardness and laziness.
He was in the Royal Engineers, and believed to be a very clever man in his profession. But there was never anything in the least bright or original in his conversation. Yet, for some vague reason, Molly credited him with the ability to do great deeds, and was particularly gracious to him.
Mrs. Langdale, who was lively herself, infinitely preferred Charlie Cleveland’s boisterous company, and on the present occasion she rose to follow him with great promptitude.
“I must find out how he has managed the rest of his costume,” she said to Molly. “It is sure to be strikingly original–like himself.”
The contempt deepened a little on Molly’s face, contempt and regret–an odd mixture.
“He is very funny, no doubt,” she said; “but I think one gets a little tired of his perpetual gaiety. I don’t think we should find him so delightful if a storm came on. I haven’t much faith in those people who can never take anything really seriously. I believe he would die laughing.”
“All the better,” declared Mrs. Langdale, who loved Charlie’s impetuous ways with maternal tolerance. “It is always better to laugh than cry, my dear; though it isn’t always easier by any means.”
She departed with the words, laughing a little to herself at Molly’s critical mood; and Captain Fisher went and sat stolidly down beside Molly, who turned to him with an instant smile of welcome. She was the only lady on board who was never bored by this man’s quiet society. She liked him thoroughly, finding the contrast between him and his volatile friend a great relief.