“Are you a petter, as well as a he-man?” she asked, becoming taut again and rolling upward her exposed eye. His hand moved slowly along her cheekbone and jaw, pausing, tracing a muscle, moving on. Then hark thee, Halim: I desire a thing that, had I not been at all, becoming aware of it I would awake; that, dead, remembering it I would cling to this world though it be as a beggar in a tattered robe; yea, rather that would I than a king among kings amid the soft and scented sounds of paradise. Find me this, O Halim. “Say,” she said curiously, no longer alarmed, “what are you doing that for?”
“Learning your face.”
“Learning my face? Are you going to make me in marble?” she asked quickly, raising herself. “Can you do a marble of my head?”
“Yes.”
“Can I have it?” She thrust herself away, watching his face. “Make two of them, then,” she suggested. And then: “If you won’t do that, give me the other one, the one you’ve got, and I’ll pose for this one without charging you anything. How about that?”
“Maybe.”
“I’d rather do that than to have this one. Have you learned my face good?” She moved again, quickly, returning to her former position. She turned her face up. “Learn it good.” Now, this Halim was an old man, so old that he had forgotten much. He had held this king on his first pony, walking patiently beside him through the streets and paths; he had stood between the young prince and all those forms of sudden and complete annihilation which the young prince had engendered after the ingenuous fashion of boys; he had got himself between the young prince and the inevitable parental admonishment which these entailed. And he sat with his gray hands on his thin knees and his gray head bent above his hands while dusk came across the simple immaculate domes of the city and into the court, stilling the sound of birds so that the lilac silence of the court was teased only by the plashing of water, and on among the grave restlessness of the palms. After a while Halim spoke. — Ah, Lord, in the Georgian hills I loved this maid myself, when I was a lad. But that was long ago, and she is dead.
She lay still against his breast while sunset died like brass horns across the water. She said, without moving:
“You’re a funny man. . I wonder if I could sculp? Suppose I learn your face?. . Well don’t, then. I’d just as soon lie still. You’re a lot more comfortable to lie on than you look. Only I’d think you’d be getting tired now — I’m no hummingbird. Aren’t you tired of holding me?” she persisted. He moved his head at last and looked at her again with his caverned uncomfortable eyes, and she tried to do something with her eyes, assuming at the same time an attitude, a kind of leering invitation, so palpably theatrical and false that it but served to emphasize that grave, hard sexlessness of hers.
“What are you trying to do,” he asked quietly, “vamp me?”
She said, “Shucks.” She sat up, then squirmed off his lap and to her feet. “So you won’t give it to me? You just won’t?”
“No,” he told her soberly. She turned away, but presently she stopped again and looked back at him.
“Give you twenty-five dollars for it.”
“No.”
She said, “Shucks,” again, and she went on on her brown silent feet, and was gone. (Your name is like a little golden bell hung in my heart, and when I think of you. .) The Nausikaa sped on. It was twilight abruptly; soon, a star.
SEVEN O’CLOCK
The place did appear impregnable, but then he had got used to feeling it behind him in his chair, where he knew nothing was going to happen to it. Besides, to change now, after so many days, would be like hedging on a bet. . Still, to let those two old bums kid him about it. . He paused in the door of the saloon.
The others were seated and well into their dinner, but before four vacant places that bland eternal grapefruit, sinister and bland as taxes. Some of them hadn’t arrived: he’d have time to run back to his room and leave it. And let one of them drunkards throw it out the window for a joke?
Mrs. Wiseman carrying a tray said briskly, “Gangway, Pete,” and he crowded against the wall for her to pass, and then the niece turned her head and saw him. “Belly up,” she said, and he heard a further trampling drawing near. He hesitated a second, then he thrust his hat into the little cubbyhole between the two shelves. He’d risk it tonight, anyway. He could still sort of keep an eye on it. He took his seat.
Fairchild’s watch surged in: a hearty joviality that presently died into startled consternation when it saw the grapefruit. “My God,” said Fairchild in a hushed tone.
“Sit down, Dawson,” Mrs. Wiseman ordered sharply. “We’ve had about all that sort of humor this voyage will stand.”
“That’s what I think,” he agreed readily. “That’s what Julius and Major Ayers and me think at every meal. And yet, when we come to the table, what do we see?”
“My first is an Indian princess,” said Mark Frost in a hollow lilting tone. “But it’s a little early to play charades yet, isn’t it?”
Major Ayers said, “Eh?” looking from Mark Frost to Fairchild. Then he ventured, “It’s grapefruit, isn’t it?”
“But we have so many of them,” Mrs. Maurier explained. “You are supposed to never tire of them.”
“That’s it,” said Fairchild solemnly. “Major Ayers guessed it the first time. I wasn’t certain what it was, myself. But you can’t fool Major Ayers; you can’t fool a man that’s traveled as much as he has, with just a grapefruit. I guess you’ve shot lots of grapefruit in China and India, haven’t you, Major?”
“Dawson, sit down,” Mrs. Wiseman repeated. “Make them sit down, Julius, or go out to the kitchen if they just want to stand around and talk.”
Fairchild sat down quickly. “Never mind,” he said. “We can stand it if the ladies can. The human body can stand anything,” he added owlishly. “It can get drunk and stay up and dance all night, and consume crate after crate of gr—” Mrs. Wiseman leaned across his shoulder and swept his grapefruit away. “Here,” he exclaimed.
“They don’t want ’em,” she told Miss Jameson across the table. “Get his, too.” So they reft Major Ayers of his also, and Mrs. Wiseman clashed the plates viciously onto her tray. In passing behind Mrs. Maurier she struck the collapsible serving table with her hip and said, “Damn!” pausing to release the catch and slam it back into the bulkhead. Pete’s hat slid onto the floor and she thrust it against the wall with her toe.
“Yes, sir,” Fairchild repeated, “the human body can stand lots of things. But if I have to eat another grapefruit — Say, Julius, I was examining my back today, and do you know, my skin is getting dry and rough, with a kind of yellowish cast. If it keeps on, first thing I know I won’t any more dare undress in public than Al Jack—”
Mark Frost made a sound of sharp alarm. “Look out, people,” he exclaimed, rising. “I’m going to get out of here.”