The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

582 Their low-toned laughter floated up to him as he stood, and he chuckled softly at his own thoughts, which were of a little cottage on the Pevensey levels, where the level floor of the Channel stretches out to France, where the chalk-land slopes up to the line of wooded hills behind. He sighed lightly as he passed into the snug little cabin and closed the door ‘behind him, leaving the kindly dark- ness of the decks to Marjorie and Oakes. | Hemingway, stariding in the door- way of his cabin, was suddenly aware of the two standing in the open by the rail, and for a moment stood watch- ing them. He was aware of a sudden pang that told him, if indeed he had needed the telling, that his air of non- chalance was all pretense and self- delusion, and that Marjorie was very dear to him. It needed but the sight of her with another man, and that man his best friend, to teach him that. In that short moment he realized that the bar- riers between them, that a while ago seemed of his own making, were in truth very real ones, and that it was in all reality not alone his poverty nor even the fact that he had lost his repu- tation in his profession. There was another and far more real bar, and it cut him like a whiplash. Not for nothing is it given to a man to have the wanderlust so that all the open trails of the world are familiar to him. Not for nothing is it given to a man to be cursed with the curse of Reuben: ‘‘ Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel!” When one has tasted brandy. and soda, milk becomes unpalatable, and when a man has fought for his own hand through all the purlieus and back . alleys of the world, he has a natural repugnance for tramping _ stolidly down the crowded thoroughfares, hand in hand with a woman, no matter how he loves her. 2, Hemingway put it more whimsically as he glanced sidewise down the decks THE ARGOSY. and saw his friend so frankly occupied with the girl that they had both grown to love. x ““T rather imagine that the Johnnie was right,” he mused, “ when he said: “The race is run by one and one, and never by two and two.’ . “ An’ anyhow you figure it out, I doubt if she’d do more than say a big, loud ‘ No!’ if I did ask her. No, sir! You can take a sampan right here an’ make the shore an’ get to Peking with- out sayin’ a word about it; have a try for what you buried up there, get what you want, and be back again in twenty-four hours, an’ no one will be the wiser. “Then, when you have. got what you went after, you can divide with Oakes and have a show for your white alley—after your friend has had his chance. A man with thirty thousand pounds can do much that is refused to a poor man. “Can’t you see, you bloomin’ ass, that you are fightin’ against yourself —that what you’re afraid of may very well come to pass, and that he may win out, and that as much as you like him an’—yes—well—her, too, you ‘can’t even say ‘ God speed’ to the man who has stood your friend. Oh, but you're a dog in the manger, Geoffrey Hemingway, but— “* Better the sight of eyes that see than the wanderin’s of desire.’ Oh, boy!”—this to the boy in a passing sampan, which shot under the shadow of the rail in the darkness—“ kung tse wan lao sampan.” Even in the growing darkness he could see the grin dividing the boy’s face as the sampan bumped into the landing-stage.: Hastily stepping to his room, Hemingway tore a page from his note-book and scribbled upon it a few hasty lines, then, stowing his heavy revolver in his pocket, he went out upon: the deck and walked softly to Oakes’s cabin. The door stood open, and in the half-light from the water he had no difficulty in finding the pillow, to COMicdoo S CO@