Argosy, Vol. 120, No. 1 — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 father’s condition. This was a worry never very far from her mind these days. And that her father, in some of his peculiar moods of jate, might say and do things to make young Corwin’s upward climb hard was undeniable. Especially might this be the case in the first few days or weeks, before the new man had opportunity to ac- quaint himself with the really splendid man her father normally was. She believed she knew her father as few daughters of seamen ever can. Though this was her first voyage with him on one of his ships, she had the memory of all his | stays in American ports as practicalby de- voted to her. This had been due, un- doubtedly, to the fact that she had never known her mother, who, she had learned, had died in giving her birth. She had had the best care a maiden sister of her father’s could let her share with ‘her paralyzed grandfather. But, as if not satisfied that this was enough, her father had made every home-coming a round of picnics at every place he could imagine a child finding pleasure. Had he been at home more, he must have spoiled her utterly. As it was, she had grown up to regard him as the embodiment of about all human and masculine perfections. His final extravagance in her behalf had come during the previous year which he had spent on land. He had sent her to an expensive finishing school for young ladies. Marion had hardly enjoyed it or profited by it. She did not belong with girls who could not do up their own hair. The only time when she felt as if she should try to adopt some of their foreign-governess- taught mannerisms was at the commence- ment. Her father seemed to possess a bearing of almost courtly dignity which set him above rather than below the mere mil- lionaires. But she had been delighted when he promised to take her on this voyage in- stead of returning her to school. Whe long trip had begun at the end of a summer spent in a quiet and almost too select seashore resort. Here, for the first, had come to her notice her father’s habit of sudden absences from things when she _ least expected him to go away. ‘Then she had accepted his explanation of sudden 7 THE ARGOSY. turns in businesses: in which he had some slight financial interest. Only after she discovered that he would disappear as un- expectedly from the deck of the ship and shut himself up tight in his room without regard to the needs of the real business in hand did she begin to doubt about those summer" absences. — But drunkenness was about the last ex- planation she would accept for them. . Her bringing up, in a small town, with small- town upper-middle-class people, had been almost exactly that best calculated to make her count drunkenness not merely a vice, but the kind of vice of which no really decent person could conceivably be guilty, a vice by its very nature confined to slums and coarse people. Even the statement that an acquaintance had “taken to drink ” never conveyed to her mind that he had besotted himself with rum. She thought it meant, rather, that he was pos- sibly injuring his health in efforts to stimu- late nerves broken down with work or worry. Dan was the first person whom she had forgiven for the insinuation that her father was a drunkard. . When she had taken time to reason that he had barely. met her father before, she saw that he could not. know better than he spoke. But for any one who really knew him .to accuse Captain Hope of drunkenness was a thing to drive her to loyal fury. She had not regretted the departure of the first two mates. Anything they got that drove them to leave the ship they deserved for their perfidious judgment of their captain’s ailment. She hardly regret- ted Bob Harvey’s quitting, so much as her own blunder in imagining she loved one who could have quit as he had, with the accusation of her father as his excuse. ~ But her father was certainly sick, and certainly getting much worse all the time. ~~. ee She thought of her grandfather’s paralysis, though this did not seem like any paralysis of which she had heard. Obviously it was, however, in some degree, a nervous afflic- tion of some kind. .. She hoped she could get this new and seemingly—at least to her feelings about him—capable mate into a talk with the 1e@DOOkKS CO@ CO