Blow the Man Down - A Romance of the Coast
Page 5And he understood women so little that he did not realize that he was
making the ages-old plea which has softened feminine rancor ever since
the Sabine women were borne away in their captors' arms and forgave
their captors.
She stared at him, making once more a maiden's swift appraisal of this
young man who had offered himself so humbly as a sacrifice. His brown
hands were crossed in front of him and clutched convulsively his white
cap. The cap and the linen above the collar of his uniform coat brought
out to the full the hue of his manly tan. The red flush of his shocked
contrition touched his cheeks, and, all in all, whatever the daughter of
Julius Marston, Wall Street priest of high finance, may have thought of
his effrontery, the melting look she gave him from under lowered eyelids
"I suppose you are thoroughly and properly ashamed of what you have
done!"
"I am ashamed--so ashamed that I shall never dare to raise my eyes to
you again. I will do what I promised. I will jump overboard."
"Captain Mayo, look at me!"
When he obeyed, with the demeanor of a whipped hound, his perturbation
would not allow him to show as much appreciation of her as she had
displayed in the secret study of him, which she now promptly concealed.
He surveyed her wistfully, with fear. And a maiden, after she has
understood that she has obtained mastery over brawn and soul, does not
care to be looked at as if she were Medusa.
tucked into place a vagrant lock of hair with a shapely finger, thereby
suggesting, had there been a cynical observer present, that Miss Alma
Marston never allowed any situation, no matter how crucial, to take her
attention wholly from herself.
There was no mistaking it--had that cynical observer been there,
he would have noted that she pouted slightly when Mayo declared his
unutterable shame.
"You will never get over that shame, will you?"
And Captain Mayo, feverishly anxious to show that he understood the
enormity of his offense, and desiring to offer pledge for the future,
declared that his shame would never lessen.
resentment, or whether the resentment quite supplanted all other
emotions, might have been a difficult problem for the cynic. But when
she tilted her chin and stared the offender full in the eyes, propping
her plump little hands in the side-pockets of her white reefer,
Captain Mayo, like a man hit by a cudgel, was struck with the sudden
and bewildering knowledge that he did not know much about women, for
she asked, with a quizzical drawl, "Just what is there about me, dear
captain, to inspire that everlasting regret which seems to be troubling
you so much?"