"Oh!" Suddenly recollection came to her, and her anxieties rushed upon her once more."The ice! The ice!" She sprang to her feet, and grasped Cleggett by both shoulders, searching his face with eager eyes."You did not lie to me, did you? You promised me ice! Where is the ice?""You shall have the ice," said Cleggett, "at once.""Thank God!" she said.And then:"Where are Elmer and the box?" "Elmer?Oh, the short man!On shore.I believe that he and your chauffeur had some sort of an altercation, for the chauffeur went off andleft him."
"Yes," she said, simply, as they passed up the companionway to the deck together, "that man, the driver, refused to bring us any farther."Cleggett must have looked a little blank at that, for she suddenly threw back her head and laughed at him.And then, sobering instantly, she called to the squat young man:
"Elmer! Oh, Elmer! You may bring the boxes on board!" She turned to Cleggett: "He may, mayn't he? Thank you--I was sure you would say he might.And if one of your men could just give him a lift? And--the ice?""George," called Cleggett, "help the man get the boxes aboard.Kuroki, bring fifty pounds of ice on deck."She sighed as she heard him give these orders, but it was a sigh of satisfaction, and she smiled at Cleggett as she signed.Sometimes a great deal can happen in a very short space of time.Ten minutes before, Cleggett had never seen this lady, and now he was giving orders at her merest suggestion.But in those ten minutes he had seen her weep, he had seen her faint, he had seen her recover herself; he had seen her emergefrom the depths of despair into something more like self-control; he had carried her in his arms, she had laughed at him, she had twice impulsively grasped him by the arm, she had smiled at him three times, she had sighed twice, she had frowned once; she had swept upon him bringing with her an impression of the mysterious.Many men are married to women for years without seeing their wives display so many and such varied phases; to Cleggett it seemed not so much that he was making a new acquaintance as renewing one that had been broken off suddenly at some distant date.Cleggett, like the true-hearted gentleman and born romanticist that he was, resolved to serve her without question until such time as she chose to make known to him her motives for her actions.
"Do you know," she said, softly and gravely to Cleggett as George and Elmer deposited the oblong box upon a spot which she indicated near the cabin, "I have met very few men in my life who are capable of what you are doing?""I?" said Cleggett, surprised."I have done nothing.""You have found a woman in a strange position--an unusual position, indeed!--and you have helped her without persecuting her with questions.""It is nothing," murmured Cleggett.
"Would you think me too impulsive," she said, with a rare smile, "if I told you that you are the sort of man whom women are ready to trust implicitly almost at first sight?"Cleggett did not permit himself to speak for fear that the thrill which her words imparted to him would carry him too far.He bowed.
"But I think you mentioned tea?" she said."Did I hear you say it was orange pekoe, or did I dream that? And couldn't we have it on deck?"While Kuroki was bringing a table and chairs on deck and busying himself about that preparation of tea, Cleggett watched Elmer, the squat young man, with a growing curiosity.George and Cap'n Abernethy were also watching Elmer from a discreet distance.Even Kuroki, silent, swift, and well-trained Kuroki, could not but steal occasional glances at Elmer.Had Cleggett been of a less lofty and controlled spirit he would certainlyhave asked questions.
For Elmer, having uncovered the zinc can and taken from it a hammer and a large tin funnel, proceeded to break the big chunk of ice which Kuroki had brought him, into half a dozen smaller pieces.These smaller lumps, with the exception of two, he put into the zinc bucket, wrapped around with pieces of coffee sacking.Then he put the cover on the bucket to exclude the air.
The zinc bucket was thus a portable refrigerator, or rather, ice house.
Taking one of the lumps of ice which he had left out of the zinc bucket for immediate use, Elmer carefully and methodically broke it into still smaller pieces--pieces about the size of an English walnut, but irregular in shape.Then he inserted the tin funnel into a small hole in the uppermost surface of the unpainted, oblong box and dropped in twenty or more of the little pieces of ice.When a piece proved to be too big to go through the funnel Elmer broke it again.
Cleggett noticed that there were five of these small holes in the box, and that Elmer was slowly working his way down the length of it from hole to hole, sitting astride of it the while.
From the way in which he worked, and the care with which he conserved every smallest particle of ice, Elmer's motto seemed to be: "Haste not, waste not." But he did not appear to derive any great satisfaction from his task, let alone joy.In fact, Elmer seemed to be a joyless individual; one who habitually looked forward to the worst.On his broad face, of the complexion described in police reports as "pasty," melancholy sat enthroned.His nose was flat and broad, and flat and broad were his cheek bones, too.His hair was cut very short everywhere except in front; in front it hung down to his eyebrows in a straggling black fringe or "bang." Not that the fringe would have covered the average person's forehead; this "bang" was not long; but the truth is that Elmer's forehead was lower than the average person's and therefore easily covered.He had what is known in certain circles as a cauliflower, or chrysanthemum, ear.
