"
For his total expenses, beyond the confines of the quay, amounted
to one cent, disbursed to buy an evening paper which had contained a
brief interview with himself concerning the future of the intellectual
drama in England. He had told the pressman that "The Orient Pearl"
would run a hundred nights. Save for putting "The Orient Girl" instead
of "The Orient Pearl," and two hundred nights instead of one hundred
nights, this interview was tolerably accurate.
IV
Two entire interminable days of the voyage elapsed before Edward Henry
was clever enough to encounter Isabel Joy--the most notorious and the
least visible person in the ship. He remembered that she had said:
"You won't see anything of me." It was easy to ascertain the number
of her state-room--a double-berth which she shared with nobody. But it
was less easy to find out whether she ever left it, and if so, at what
time of day. He could not mount guard in the long corridor; and
the stewardesses on the _Lithuania_ were mature, experienced and
uncommunicative women, their sole weakness being an occasional
tendency to imagine that they, and not the captain, were in supreme
charge of the steamer. However, Edward Henry did at last achieve his
desire. And on the third morning, at a little before six o'clock, he
met a muffled Isabel Joy on the D deck. The D deck was wet,
having just been swabbed; and a boat--chosen for that dawn's
boat-drill--ascended past them on its way from sea-level to the dizzy
boat-deck above; on the other side of an iron barrier, large crowds
of early-rising third-class passengers were standing and talking and
staring at the oblong slit of sea which was the only prospect offered
by the D deck; it was the first time that Edward Henry aboard had
set eyes on a steerage passenger; with all the conceit natural to the
occupant of a costly state-room, he had unconsciously assumed that he
and his like had sole possession of the ship.
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