CHAPTER IV
Hermione, that strenuous nymph, was in the habit of early rising for a row in her little skiff, finishing up with a plunge. After that, bed again, where she devoured bacon and eggs, coffee, and perhaps kippers or haddock.
Sometimes Paula accompanied her, but never Cécile. This luxurious beauty had no taste for cold and sticky Maine sea-water. She liked hers warm and fresh, in a tub at about ten. As for Captain Bell, he never appeared on deck when in port until after déjeûner, which was served at twelve. None of the family got to bed before midnight, usually playing bridge until all hours. When there were no guests, Hermione and Cécile always played against Paula and their father. This may have been the reason why the eldest and youngest sister were not particularly devoted chums.
The morning after the dinner episode of the salt-cellar, Hermione was up as usual at about six. For these matutinal excursions she always wore her bathing-suit, a simple but exceedingly becoming costume of cucumber-green trimmed with maroon and an apology for a skirt which reached to a little above her pretty knees. Her hair was snugly coiffed in a dark crimson kerchief, and, taking her, as sailors say, full and bye, Hermione was well worth getting up at sunrise to see.
As a general thing ladies are not supposed to appear on the deck of a yacht before eight bells, but the Shark was more of a home than a yacht, and Hermione sent the steward to prepare the way before her. Captain Heldstrom was always up, and Hermione was, under his strict injunction, never to go where she could not be sighted from the schooner.
Usually the girl contented herself with pulling about the harbour, taking her plunge alongside on her return. Sometimes, however, when lying in some wild and picturesque harbour, she would land on the beach to explore or perhaps have a try for snipe with her little 16-bore. Often she gathered wild-flowers for the breakfast table, and taking it altogether, these early morning rambles were the best part of Hermione's day.
On this particular occasion, she decided for a stroll along the shore on the eastern side of the bay, and as the place looked promising for birds, she took her gun and a game-bag containing a few cartridges. As she went on deck the quartermaster told her that Captain Heldstrom had gone ashore on some business of the vessel, for Captain Bell had announced that the Shark was in for a couple of weeks continually under way, and it was generally understood that this was a sporting attempt to shake off the Pilot-fish. In fact, bets as to the success of the undertaking were already in process of registry.
Olesen helped her into her skiff, and Hermione pulled away in the direction of the beach, reflecting naughtily to herself that since Heldstrom was ashore she might take advantage of the fact to have a look at the salt marsh on the other side of a strip of dwarf pines growing almost to the water's edge. The night before she had observed flocks of snipe and plover circling this marsh, also a bunch of curlew, and being a very good shot, she did not see what was to prevent her from getting a good bag. True, the whole place was preserved by the Shoal Harbour Gun and Fish Club, of which her father was not a member, but to Hermione this fact merely added zest to her expedition.
Halfway to the beach she passed within about two hundred yards of the Daffodil, at which she looked curiously. Nobody was in sight, and the dinghy was hanging out astern. "Lazy beast!" thought Hermione, with the contempt of the early riser for the sloths who are still in bed.
She fetched up at the beach, a good mile from the Shark, and leaped ashore, grapnel in one hand and her little double-barrelled gun in the other. The tide was well out, and on reaching a point whence she could look over into the little lagoon, with its encircling strip of marsh, Hermione could see several flocks of plover and big snipe weaving here and there, like motes of dust eddying in the breeze, while their clear whistlings reached her, sharp and sweet in the morning air.
She passed quickly over the crest of the beach and hurried toward a point some quarter of a mile distant, where the pine-scrub grew down to skirt the sedge. As the tide was far out, Hermione judged that, in all probability, the sedge was full of feeding birds, so she loaded her gun and started in to beat out the rim of the marsh.
Scarcely had she gone fifty feet when up sprang a big yellow-leg snipe, rising straight in the air as though propelled less by its wings than the spring from the long, powerful legs. He was not to be missed under the conditions. Hermione's gun flew to her shoulder, her quick eye glanced along the shining barrel, and making quite sure, she fired. The very centre of the charge found the unfortunate bird, and down it dropped, straight as a plummet.
Another rose to the left. Hermione fired and missed. The two reports had aroused the marsh, however, and the air was filled with flying birds and their shrill, startled calls. A bunch of splendid golden plover, rising from the other side of the lagoon, began to circle the place, and Hermione, her breath coming quickly and her eyes like sapphires, drew back into the shelter of the pines. Straight toward her came the plover; then, within easy range, Hermione stepped suddenly from her blind and threw up her gun. The birds immediately bunched, as she knew they would, and for a moment appeared to pause undecided in their flight. Picking a plover in the centre of the bunch, Hermione fired; then, as the flock swerved, she fired again. It was a splendid opportunity, and for a moment Hermione held her breath at the results of her shot. Plover seemed literally to rain from the sky. Some were quite dead, others merely winged, and as they fell high up where the grass was short, Hermione was very busy for a few moments, loading and beating about for the wounded.
One bird escaped into the tall grass. It seemed useless to look for him, so with her game-bag bulging with the prizes already secured, Hermione decided that, since she had been making a good deal of a fusillade and the place was, after all, a preserve, it might be just as well modestly and hastily to withdraw. Also, to tell the truth, the sight of the beautiful dead birds, their glorious plumage stained and blood-soaked, rather sickened her. It was quite one thing to shoot at a flying bird and another to pursue him with relentless ferocity when a wounded fugitive upon the ground, finally to secure his mangled and bloody corpse. Hermione found herself suddenly sickened with the sport. The thought of the wounded little plover hiding in the sedge, perhaps dying slowly of its hurts, gave her a very uncomfortable sensation in her throat. For the instant she felt a hot desire to fling her gun into the marsh and hunt no more.
"I'm finished..." she said, aloud. "Hereafter I stick to the clay-pigeon trap on the Shark's quarter-deck. This is a nasty business."
Filled with remorse she took one of the plover from her game-bag and stood for a moment looking at it as it lay in her hand. The tears sprang suddenly to her eyes. Here was a little creature which a moment before had been so joyously full of life, now a sad, bloodstained martyr to the lust of killing. Hermione stamped her small, sandalled foot.
"It's downright wicked..." she cried aloud.
"Yeah..." came a harsh, nasal voice from directly behind her; "it air daownright wicked ... to shoot on posted graound."
Sadly startled, Hermione swung about and beheld a tall, bleak, forbidding figure, whose harsh, Yankee face was quite lacking in the dry, semi-humorous quality which is to be found in so many of his type, and which the irony of his words might have led one to expect. On the contrary, it was a cruel, sneering face, with small, swinish eyes and thin, straight lips, smooth-shaven and of the expression which one associates with the witch-burners of earlier days.
The man carried no gun, but held in one hand a stout cudgel. His costume was that of the vicinity, but above the visor of his battered ship's cap were the letters:—"S.H.G. & F.C." Hermione understood at once that he was a game-keeper.
The blood rushed to her face. It is always embarrassing to be taken in the act of conscious wrong-doing, but particularly so when one happens to be a young lady in a very syncopated bathing suit. Moreover, there was a quality in the man's regard which angered and embarrassed her; a sort of sneering contempt, such as a brutal officer of the law might direct toward some depraved unfortunate who was dead to all common decency. Hermione suddenly felt as one does in some silly dream where one finds one's self in the middle of a ball-room or addressing a public meeting in a night-gown. Worst of all, she knew that she was in the wrong.
The game-keeper looked her up and down, slowly and with insulting deliberation. Hermione felt her embarrassment and fright give way to anger.
"Well..." said she, "what do you want?"
"What do I want, hey? Wa'al, fust off I want that gun o' your'n and them birds. After that, I want you to take a leetle walk with me and talk a mite to the sup'ntendent. That's what I want, young woman."
Hermione stared. She had had a vague idea that, if discovered by any of the club people, the worst that could happen would be the indignity of getting "warned off." Even this, she had thought, would probably be done politely and with due apologies. But to be haled like a thief before the superintendent ... and that in her bathing suit, was so extreme a measure as to arouse her ridicule and anger.
"Indeed!" said she, scornfully. "You don't want very much, do you?"
The man scowled. "I don't want no more than what I'm a-goin' to git!" he answered.
Hermione's eyes began to darken. The rich blood glowed through her clear olive skin.
"You think so?" she retorted. "Then let me tell you that you will get nothing but my name and address. I am Miss Bell, and my father is Captain Bell, of the schooner-yacht Shark. If the club wants to do anything about this it can go ahead and do it."
The game-keeper gave her a sullen look.
"The club is goin' to do somethin' abaout it," said he, "and it's goin' to do it right naow and through me. I'm the game-warden, and I got my orders. You'll hev to come along o' me to the sup'ntendent, and that's all there is abaout it. Like's not he'll let ye off with a warnin' ... that's none o' my affair. So hand over that gun and come along, quiet and peaceable."
"Look here," cried Hermione, fiercely, "do you think I'm going to be taken in like a thief?"
"Wa'al ... ye air a thief, ain't ye? Them birds belong to the club."
Hermione stamped her foot. The man's ugly manner was beginning to get away with her temper, never any too docile under provocation.
"Take your old birds!" said she, and tumbled them out upon the ground. "And let me tell you that when I go back and Captain Heldstrom learns how I've been treated, he'll come over here and wring your neck as if it belonged to one of those snipe! And if you think I'm going with you ... like this..."
Anger stifled her speech at the mere idea. The game-keeper hunched his shoulders with a sneer.
"If you can come ashore half naked to shoot the club's snipe and plover," said he, "it won't hurt ye none to go a mite further and see the sup'ntendent..." His voice took an impatient rasp. "Come, I've jawed here long enough ... will you come, 'r hev I got to drag ye tha'ar by main force?"
He took a step toward her. Hermione, light on her feet as a Spartan girl, might have saved herself by flight. But the sneering brutality of the man had torn from her the last, lingering grip she had upon a temper which had many times been the cause of her undoing. With an inarticulate little cry she sprang back, and scarcely realising what she did, threw the gun to her shoulder.
"You beast!" she cried, through her set teeth. "You try to lay hand on me and I'll blow your head off!"
Now, the game-keeper, surly brute though he may have been, came of stern and rigid Puritan stock, and once having decided upon what was his duty, meant to carry it out at all costs. He saw that the superb young huntress in front of him was beside herself with fury, and he fully realised that he was taking a terrific chance of being terribly wounded if not killed in his tracks. In spite of this, though the colour faded under his mahogany tan, his lean jaw set squarely, lips tightened, and he began to walk steadily toward Hermione.
He was within three paces when the girl heard a brushing noise in the pines, directly behind her. The game-keeper stopped short, and Hermione, who had raised her gun to cover his chest, saw his eyes travel past her to fill with amazement at something which he saw beyond. Half-fainting and with knees that tottered under her, the girl turned to look upon a splendid, Olympic figure standing against the dark background of the pines.
"The Pilot-fish!" gasped Hermione, under her breath.
She lowered the gun, and stood with her legs swaying under her unsteadily, staring dumbly at Applebo. Vaguely, she felt that he had arrived barely in time to save her from committing a very terrible act, though whether or not she would actually have pulled the trigger is doubtful. The chances are that at the critical moment Hermione would either have flung aside the gun or else fired in the air, and then very likely would have had a fit of hysterics, which might have proved more alarming to the harsh longshoreman than a whole battery of weapons.
Applebo stood for a moment looking from the girl to the man, his eyebrows, which were very bushy for one of his youth, drawn down over his yellow eyes, and a straight line cut vertically between them. At first glance he gave the impression of a beautifully chiselled statue in light bronze. He was clad in a swimming costume which would have been quite de rigueur on any beach, but the material, originally some shade of yellow or sienna, had finally acquired the tone of the sun-tanned skin. Yet there was nothing startling or offensive in effect, for so beautifully was the strong, lithe body moulded that it suggested less a mortal man than some splendid, pagan demi-god.
Applebo stepped forward to Hermione's shoulder ... and the group became complete. God and goddess they looked, she dark, tropical, vivid of colouring; he a sort of golden-hued Apollo. So striking was the effect and so beautiful that even the harsh, unlovely warden may have felt certain rudimentary stirrings of appreciation.
"Gosh-all-sufficiency!" he growled. "Thar's the he-one! Ain't it the fashion to wear clothes no more?"
"Shut your face!" quoth Applebo, unpoetically. "What d'ye mean by bothering this lady? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
"Huh! ..." growled the keeper; "you're a nice one to talk about bein' ashamed, ain't ye? You and your fee-male critter..."
Hermione, still staring in a fascinated way at Applebo, caught the sudden flame in the amber eyes. Something swept past her with a rush like the charge of a Nubian lion. There was a flash of bare limbs, a snarl or two, the flutter of clothing, and a body which looked all arms and legs gyrating in the air ... and there was the keeper rolling over and over grotesquely as a shot rabbit and, a little to one side, stood Applebo, his body half bent, big arms crooked, and the yellow mane hanging about his ears, watching the fallen man like a cat about to spring.
There was the keeper rolling over and over
grotesquely as a shot rabbit
The keeper scrambled to his feet and stood for a moment pale and tottering, one hand on the other shoulder and a scowl on his deep-lined face.
"Pull your freight...!" said Applebo, in his deep bass, "or I'll tear your ugly head off!"
Thus, no doubt, may Achilles have admonished Agamemnon, though Homer puts the speech in different words. The game-keeper was no coward, but neither was he a fool, and although his tawny antagonist had not struck him, the sensations of the contact were those of disputing the right of way with a rapidly moving motor-car. The keeper looked the situation over, but could see no good in it. Moreover, he saw a sudden yellow flame in the blinking eyes fastened upon him. Without a word the man turned and slouched off into the pines.
Applebo glanced quickly at Hermione.
"Sit down!" said he. "You look white."
Hermione's usually robust limbs seemed to collapse beneath her, and she dropped to the pine-strewn sand.
"You got here just in time!" said she, tremulously. "I might have shot him."
"I doubt it," said Applebo, "your gun muzzle was weaving figure eights. It would have served him right if you had ... and I'd have sworn to anything."
Hermione laughed hysterically, then glanced up at the poet. He was standing a couple of paces away, his arms folded on his chest, his eyes looking out across the marsh.
"It's silly of me to be so upset..." said Hermione, and covered her face with her hands. "I'll be all right in a minute."
"Did you know the place was posted?" asked Applebo.
"Yes..."
"Then you really haven't any kick coming."
"What...!" Hermione's hands dropped to her sides, and she stared at him in amazement. Applebo glanced back indifferently, and she scarcely recognised the sleepy face and blinking eyes.
He pointed to the birds which she had tumbled out of her game-bag.
"Taken with the goods ... and I must say, you did pretty well for three shots. Do you like to kill things? It seems rather awful to me ... especially in a woman, to slaughter little birds and animals for fun. And I suppose you would raise an awful howl about vivisection."
Hermione sat bolt upright. The colour came back to her pale cheeks, and her violet eyes began to darken with anger. All sense of faintness was swept away as if by magic. Applebo was not looking at her; he was standing straight as a young poplar, his shoulder turned to her, sleepily contemplating the marsh.
"If you feel that way about it," said Hermione, hotly, "I wonder you came to my rescue."
"I was rescuing the game-keeper. Besides, I am under obligation to you people on the Shark for letting me tag you around. What a lovely bit of colour over there, on the other side of the lagoon! Sometimes I wish that I were a painter instead of a poet. However, if I can't paint it I can write an ode to it when I get back aboard my boat."
"Why don't you write a satire on women sportsmen?"
"That would not be polite. Besides, the idea is not an agreeable one. The thought of Diana has always been unpleasant to me."
"You are not very gallant."
"Gallantry," said the poet, "is the vain demonstration of superior effectiveness on the part of the male. It is more complimentary to accept a woman on the same footing."
"Do you call bombarding her with silly verses 'accepting her on the same footing'?" snapped Hermione, whose astonishment was giving way to irritation.
"Ah..." There came the slightest flicker from Applebo's blinking eyes. "So Hermione has told you that I have been sending her verses? I had an idea, for some reason, that she would keep it to herself."
He continued his contemplative observation of the marsh. Hermione gasped and stared. For whom did he take her?
"Hermione did not tell anybody," she managed to say.
"But you guessed? That is better. I am glad that Hermione did not tattle ... even though she sent back all of my verses."
Hermione did not at once reply. She was busily trying to adjust to her mind the idea that this extraordinary individual, who for three months had been sending her impassioned love-poems, did not even know her by sight!
"Why did you write verses to Hermione?" she asked. "Because her name rhymed with 'sea' and 'thee' and 'lea' and 'me'?"
Applebo turned to regard her with a flicker of interest.
"You are rather quick on a rhyme yourself, aren't you?" he observed. "No, I wrote verses to Hermione because I was in love with her."
"Indeed...!"
"Yes, I fell in love with her at first sight."
Hermione leaned forward, clasped her hands in front of her shapely legs, and looked at the poet through narrowed lids. The colour had returned, and her violet eyes were beginning to dance mischievously. Mr. Applebo was not looking at her. Indeed, she had already observed this peculiar disinclination on his part, and it puzzled her.
"Are you still in love with Hermione?" she asked.
"No; she sent back my verses."
"How did you happen to fall in love with her?"
"It was last winter. Walking down Fifth Avenue to my club for breakfast, I sometimes overtook her. An acquaintance who joined me one day told me who she was. You were all down south at the time, and Hermione was stopping with your aunt. I fell in love with her walk. Vera incessu patuit dea..." He threw her one of his brief glances. "Your walk is rather like hers; a sort of family resemblance."
"But less graceful...?"
"You are more of a mortal maid."
"Which is a way of saying more of a lump!" snapped Hermione. "Do you know which of the others I am?"
"That is too easy," said Applebo, sleepily. "You are Cécile, the beauty of the family."
"Thank you."
"And the flirt ... so it is said."
"My reputation is as bad as that?"
"Everybody knows you smashed up Huntington Wood. He is one of the few men whom I care to claim as a friend. You have broken up others, too, have you not?"
"I wonder you dare to talk to me," said Hermione.
"I would like to be smashed up. It would help my verse. If you don't mind, I believe I will transfer my devotion to you. This entails no obligation on your part ... except to read my verses."
Hermione stared up at him suspiciously. Applebo was standing as straight as a mast, his fine profile turned to her. Hermione made a little motion as though to rise. If the poet observed it he gave no sign, and she was obliged to scramble to her feet without the aid of the strong grasp which, for some peculiar reason, she craved. Up she sprang, a dark flush on either cheek and her red lips pouting. Hermione was not accustomed to such neglect. Her crimson-turbaned head came a little above the poet's shoulder. Still his eyes evaded her.
"I don't know that I am so keen for a cavalier who thinks more of his verse than he does of its object," said she.
"That's because you are a flirt," said Applebo. "Really, though, it would be a good moral tonic for you."
"To receive love-poems?"
"From a man who was in love with you purely in the abstract."
"But where's the fun?"
"That's so..." Applebo assented, and looked at her with slightly more interest as at one suggesting a new idea. Something in Hermione's eyes seemed to catch his own and hold them. The sleepy lids opened a little wider and a golden flame darted out toward the deep violet ones so close to his own. Inflammable stuff it must have found, yet it did not tarry to set this alight, but coursed on until Hermione felt it tingling through every nerve and fibre. It was quite a new sensation, this, yet carried with it something anciently familiar, so that while startled she was not shocked, but merely confused and rendered slightly incoherent in her thoughts. And then, as though this were not liberty enough, here came Applebo's deep bass, resonant yet soft as the purr of a cat, stealing in to assault her reason through another breach, the auditory one. Hermione, for the second time that day, found her usually stable impulses all adrift.
"You are uncommonly lovely," said Applebo. "What a pity that you must be such a coquette. Is Hermione like that?"
Hermione stamped her little sandalled foot.
"Do you take everything on hearsay?" she snapped. "One would give you credit for more originality."
"That is the reason I am so surprised. You do not look ruthless. But then..." He glanced back at the lagoon, "one can never tell. No doubt, it is not your fault. You have probably been horribly spoiled. Most men would want to spoil you."
"Would you?"
"As long as you were good."
"And if I were bad?"
There was a short silence. "I think," said Applebo, "that it is time that you were getting back aboard the Shark; your people might be anxious."
Hermione bit her lips with vexation. She had quite forgotten everything but the poet.
"You are quite right," said she, icily.
"I will walk with you as far as your boat," said Applebo.
CHAPTER V
Hermione glanced down at the birds lying upon the sand.
"Since I have so wickedly and unfemininely slain them," said she, "I might as well take them along."
"Yes," Applebo assented; "besides, they are evidence against you."
Hermione tossed her head. "That makes no difference. I shall not deny having shot them. If I am a flirt and a poacher and a cruel and ruthless slayer, I am at least honest!"
"When caught," amended Applebo. He gathered up the plover, tossed them into the sack, and slung it on his shoulder, then took Hermione's gun from her slightly resisting hands.
"I can carry it..." she said.
"Let me," answered the poet. "It offends my sense of fitness to see you with a weapon in your hands. You do not need it; your eyes are quite enough."
"You have a singular gift for involved compliments," said Hermione.
"These are only truths, and the truth is always involved when told to a woman. That is the reason why so few of us tell it."
"Do you tell it?"
"In part. I find that more deceptive than lying." He turned, as though to walk back toward the beach. Hermione, newly-vexed that he should be the one to bring the interview to a close, took a pace which carried her past and ahead of him. The poet made no effort to catch her up. He strolled on, with the nonchalance of one taking a solitary ramble. Occasionally he paused to admire the early morning colours over the sea and marsh.
Several paces ahead of him Hermione paused and looked back over her shoulder. The poet was regarding her contemplatively. His eyes met hers and he smiled.
"You are spoiled, aren't you?" said he.
"In what way?" Hermione demanded, hotly.
"In every way, it seems to me." Applebo regarded her thoughtfully. "Let's hurry. I want to write a poem about ... about ... lovely, conscious things that..."
"Come on, then..." Hermione interrupted. "You make me tired. Let's hurry back and you can write your silly poem and go into ecstasies over your æsthetic sensibilities ... just as my father does over his cooking, and, Heaven knows, a worse cook never spoiled a broth!"
"What!" cried Applebo. "But that's not fair! Have you ever seen any of my verses?"
"No," replied Hermione, greatly exulting in the lie.
"Then you are not fair ... naturally. But then, if you were, you would not be truly feminine. Never try to be. It is the secret of mondaine failure ... to be fair. As you have probably felt, instinctively ... being too young to have found it out in any other way. I will write a poem about you. I will call it 'The Petulant Poppy'..."
"Help...!" gasped Hermione.
"Don't you like the title?"
"But why 'Poppy'?"
"You look like a poppy ... with your black head and red kerchief. There are other reasons ... certain things connected with poppies. They are full of dope. How is it that you are permitted to knock around at this hour without a duenna?"
"I am not," Hermione replied. "This is strictly against the rules, and there is a bad time in store for me when I have to face Uncle Chris."
"Who is 'Uncle Chris'?"
"He is our sailing-master. Uncle Chris Heldstrom ... What's the matter?"
For the poet had stopped short in his tracks and was staring at her with an expression which Hermione found almost startling. The long eyelashes, which were several shades darker than his tawny hair, swept up, opening to their fullest width, and the yellow eyes blazed at the girl with a sudden, vivid intensity. Hermione, startled and fascinated, stared back in wonder, and under her inquiring gaze the blood faded from the face of the poet, to leave it of a distressing pallor.
But only for an instant or two did this last. Back came the rich, ruddy saffron; the eyelashes swept down, and the poet caught a deep breath and blinked at her, then smiled. The transformation was like that which one sees in a cat watching a canary, then suddenly surprised by some member of the household.
"What made you look like that?" demanded the girl.
Applebo blinked several times, then shrugged.
"Did I look surprised? It struck me as a bit odd that you should call your sailing-master 'Uncle Chris,' and be in dread of his displeasure. I have seen him. He is merely a Norwegian sailor, is he not?"
"He is that and more," retorted Hermione. "He is the most splendid man that ever lived! The sort of stuff that is sung of in old sagas..."
"What do you know about sagas?"
"A great deal. Uncle Chris has taught me a lot about Scandinavian legend and folk-lore. He is one of those big-hearted, big-souled men with the high courage of an early sea-king and the heart of a child ... or better, perhaps, a mother. He has been a mother to my sisters and myself." She glanced curiously at Applebo. As if to evade her scrutiny, he turned away, but not before she had caught a sudden gleam from his amber-eyes, which had darkened again and were almost veiled, in their habitual manner. Hermione also observed that there was a dark, smoky flush, which extended up the strongly-muscled neck, to disappear under the clustering mane about his ears, and that the big chest was rising and falling more forcefully than their easy pace would seem to warrant.
"What is the matter with you?" she asked, curiously.
He turned to her slowly.
"Do you think," he asked, "that your 'Uncle Chris' was ever more than a common sailor, to begin with?"
"Christian Heldstrom was never a 'common' anything!" replied Hermione, with some heat. "But so far as that goes, he was born of a good, though poor, Norwegian family and went to sea because he liked it and had to do something. I know very little about his early history. He does not like to talk about it. Why does it interest you? Are you—like some other people whom I have known—so snobbish as to be shocked that three young ladies should have been nursed and tended and taught deportment by their father's Norwegian sailing-master? Let me tell you, his manners are far better than papa's ... and papa is an F.F.V.!"
She looked at him truculently. Nothing could arouse Hermione to such quick and torrid resentment as any slight on her beloved "Uncle Chris." Wherefore, she turned her dark, violet eyes challengingly upon the poet.
"You look like a Scandinavian yourself," said she.
"My mother," replied Applebo, "was a cousin to the King of Sweden."
Hermione stopped short to stare at him. Her eyes opened very wide, also her carmine lips were slightly farther apart than strict deportment would approve.
"Really...?" she cried. "And your father...?"
"She married beneath her. It was an infatuation followed by a wedding and an elopement. Of course, she sacrificed her rank. They came to America. It is a long story, and both of my parents are now dead. Applebo is the name of an uncle who made me his heir ... he was a Swede. I don't know why I am telling you all of this; perhaps it is because I don't want you to think that I am a snob. I would rather you did not tell anybody, if you don't mind."
"Of course not!" replied Hermione. "But I would like to hear more."
"Just now your own affairs are more important. You had better get back aboard as soon as possible or your sailing-master may put you in the brig. What would he say if he saw you walking on the beach with me? It's rather a delicate situation ... considering my unsolicited attentions of the past three months."
Hermione's piquant face took on a very rich tone of red. Without answering, she began to walk rapidly toward the beach ... so rapidly, in fact, that the first few steps carried her on in advance of her companion, who seemed tranquilly determined to set the pace himself. Hermione glanced back over her shoulder.
"Since you are in such a hurry to get rid of me," she said, "why don't you hurry?"
"I was admiring your walk. It must be a family accomplishment ... inherited from your mother, no doubt. Your father walks like a duck."
"Thank you ... on the part of all of us. Does my walk remind you of Hermione?"
"Not in the least. Hermione walks like a gossamer borne by the breeze."
"And I stump along like a watch-officer."
"No. Your feet are coquetting with the earth. Hermione had no feet. She was borne by invisible wings. I rather fancy that every part of you coquettes with everything it touches. You were making love to the snipe you had just slaughtered when the game-keeper collared you. I was watching from the sedge."
"You were!" cried Hermione. "And you never interfered...?"
"Pardon me ... I did interfere ... when I thought that there was a chance of your loading him full of lead. You see, I swam ashore to contemplate the early sunlight on the marsh in order to receive certain impressions which might lead to a poem. Then you came along and spoiled it all..."
"Thanks..."
"Please do not interrupt. If you don't like what I am telling you, just say so and we will talk of something else. I will tell you how beautiful you are. That is, no doubt, a hackneyed subject, but perhaps I can find a new way of putting it..."
"Please don't be silly. Go on. I came along and spoiled it all..."
"Utterly. I was chock-a-block with æsthetic appreciation. I was delighting in the smell of salt sedge and piny perfumes, revelling in the music of joyous bird-calls, loving the companionship of snipe and curlew and plover ... free-winged sea-nomads like myself, exulting in my human solitude, getting warm after my swim, chewing tobacco..."
"What!"
"The fifth sense. I had had no breakfast, and I am very fond of chewing tobacco ... when alone. Please don't interrupt. Everything was perfect ... and then you came..."
"And spoiled it all..." Hermione's small nose, already tampering sadly with the classic in its modernly rebellious tip, became even more artistically anarchistic.
"Oh, very well..." Applebo's voice expressed polite fatigue. "If you will interrupt. I love the shade of your bathing suit. It makes you look like a Nereid ... who has found a copy of l'Art et la Mode chucked off La Provence, and got discontented with algæ. Shall I describe your ravishing face? Black storm-clouds your hair, and beneath the snow of your forehead falling into the ultramarine sea of your eyes; a sea so deep and fathomless that..."
"Shut up!"
"Pardon..."
"Close your face!" snapped Hermione.
"Very well. Only, it's not my fault. You would shove your oar in..."
"Do you think that is a nice way to speak to a lady?"
"I am not talking to a lady. There are lots of ladies. I am talking to a modern reincarnation of Artemis, who, as you probably do not know, was the ancient Greek personification of physical sweetness and purity, whom the brutal Romans had the cheek to degenerate into Diana, a bloodthirsty goddess of killing things ... snipe or plover or game-keepers or pilot-fishes ... or..."
"Oh ... please ..." Hermione looked as if about to break down. "Must I remind you that ... that ... I've had rather a trying ... morning of it..."
"Cécile..." cried the Pilot-fish. "I'm sorry."
Hermione found no particular stimulant in his sorrows, but the "Cécile" acted very tonically. Up went nose and chin again.
"Then drop personalities and go on with what you were saying about the way I spoiled it all. Your æsthetic revels ... and the tobacco and the rest..."
"Well, then," continued Applebo, "I was so content with everything as it was that when you came and began to kill my little snipe, and spoil their music with a fusillade, and swamp the odours of resin and marsh with fumes of sulphur and saltpetre, and obscure the landscape with smoke and generally put things on the blink..."
"That was easy for you..."
The poet waved his hand. "I swallowed my little cud..."
"What...! Excuse me... Pray go on..."
"I was wild with indignation. Especially as I recognised you..."
"You did...?"
"I said, 'Here is that pampered beauty, Cécile Bell, not content with breaking up all the men who know her ... or ought to ... must come over here and kill these little birds and smell up the marsh...'"
"Oh, come..."
"Well ... that acrid powder, you know. Therefore, when I saw the keeper stalking you, I was tickled to death."
"And you'd have let him run me in...?"
"I felt like helping. But when he got nasty I sympathised with you. He was right. You were wrong all the way through..."
"Merci! And you?"
"I was wrong, too. I should have let him take you to the superintendent. It would have done you good in so many different ways."
"Why didn't you...?"
Applebo gave her a quick look.
"I couldn't," he said, and looked straight into her eyes.
Hermione's heart gave a sudden, tremendous throb. In that quick little "psychological moment," which lasted only as long as it took their eyes to meet, wonderful changes were wrought. Or perhaps they were not changes, but only the crystallising of instincts and emotions some few thousands of years older than Hermione. At any rate, what scientists would call "empirical symptoms" were most pronounced. Every little dormant cell of the many millions which go to make a Hermione ... or any of the rest of us ... suddenly awoke and began to shout for something which was owed it, and for which it felt, for the first time, a strong and immediate need. This is a clumsy way of trying to express what sentimentalists call "love at first sight," which, when all is said, is really no more than the love of a pussywillow for the first promise of warmth to come, with no consideration of intervening frosts. For good or bad, that was what happened to Hermione, and all of the many queer, complex emotions found their resultant in a quick, primitive impulse of which the keynote was to make the man beside her say, with truth, that nothing really mattered but herself.
This, Mr. Applebo politely declined to do. Having instincts of his own, and a decency peculiar to the cat family, he merely blinked at Hermione and waited for her to start that most ruthless of all duels which cynics have tried to misinterpret as "love."
"Then you only interfered," said Hermione, "because you thought that I might have shot the keeper. It wasn't that you wished to render a service to a woman. It was merely a general humanitarian desire to prevent bloodshed ... a tragedy."
"Nope."
"What?"
"It wasn't that. You would not have shot him. Never! He would have dragged you weeping and half clothed..."
"Never!"
"Yes. That was what I wanted him to do. But when the time came I changed my mind. At least, I changed my behaviour. My mind is still the same. You were quite in the wrong. The game-keeper was right ... and meant to obey orders if it cost him his life. But you would not have shot him. I had no real fear of that, and theoretically, I wanted him to march you off and teach you a lesson. But when you threw that despairing look around, something brought me to your aid with a rush. I could have broken his neck without a twinge of compunction. He rather expressed my feeling when he said, '... tha'ar's the he-one!'" Applebo laughed. "I felt like that ... as though I were some wild creature and my mate was in trouble ... I beg your pardon, Cécile..."
Again the rush of emotion, followed by the cold shower. Hermione's pulses seemed filled with wine and her youthful body with that warm, intoxicating glow, incomprehensible as it was delicious ... when there came that "Cécile," and she felt like the hot iron plunged by the smith into his tub of water. No doubt, the tempering process was good for her, but she did not like it, and hissed a little, just as does the glowing metal.
"Then it wasn't chivalry," she snapped, "but a sort of primitive male instinct."
"Absolutely. A woman with a gun and a lot of slaughtered little plover is no inspiring object for chivalry ... which is, after all, principally a masculine pose. But she may awaken other sentiments. That is what you have done. I no longer regret Hermione and my rejected verses ... and that reminds me that you have not yet told me that I might transfer my attentions to you. I think that you are the most lovely creature that I ever saw, and you might awaken lots of tenderness, if you would. I am sure that I could write exquisite things to you. I would feel them, too ... which I never did toward Hermione..."
Poor Hermione! The poet was snatching her from one emotion to another in a manner most upsetting. Pique kept her from telling him then and there that she was not Cécile; that she was Hermione ... the object of three months' poetic effusion on his part, unrecognised in her true personality and unjustly vilified as a heartless coquette. Instinct told her, however, that the more he abused Cécile and deplored Hermione's heartless conduct, the worse he would feel when he learned the truth, and Hermione meant that his punishment should be thorough. A full-natured woman inherits from her primitive forbears a good deal of antagonism for the heart-compelling male, and so far Hermione had not struck back. She meant to do so effectively, when the time came. Applebo was awakening her to many new sensations, but she was very far from being conquered.
So she tossed her pretty head and remarked:—
"Verse does not appeal to me except in an impersonal, purely mental sort of way. If that contents you, go ahead and write it by the running foot. Like Hermione, I am not very keen about long-distance devotion. If you transfer your attentions to me, there will be certain responsibilities attached. The first is that you call and meet my family in a purely conventional way."
Mr. Applebo looked scared.
"Oh ... in that case ... perhaps ... do you suppose that your sister Pauline..."
"Paula," corrected Hermione, icily.
"Paula ... quite so. I wonder if Paula would mind if ... if..."
Hermione stopped short and stared. The colour flooded her face. She was suddenly the prey of a violent desire to do the man beside her a physical damage. She felt that she would like to snatch the gun from his hands and bang him over the head with the stock. Applebo looked at her and blinked.
"Don't be angry," said he. "I would never have the nerve to go aboard the Shark. I'm an awful coward about most things. Besides, I hate the idea of being listed on your collection. I wonder what you would label me..."
"'Fool's gold,'" snapped Hermione.
"That would be unjust to yourself, if I were yours," answered the poet, sleepily. "All love is pure gold ... but often there is a lot of base metal alloyed. I love you, Cécile." He blinked.
Hermione laughed.
"Then go and smelt out the alloy," said she. "That consists principally of a deep and sincere affection for Mr. Applebo."
She turned to look at him, her head critically aslant. The poet looked back. Hermione's heart began to misbehave again, and a delicious colour burned warmly through her clear, olive skin. Her deep, violet eyes looked almost purple in the crimson sunlight pervading the early morning air. Her chin was slightly raised, and her red lips invitingly apart as she waited for his reply. Without in the least suspecting it, Hermione looked like a girl who defies the kiss which she fully intends to get.
Had the poet acted like a man ... or a scoundrel, as one prefers to look at it ... and kissed Hermione then and there with that enthusiasm which her prettiness and the situation as a whole appeared to warrant, there is absolutely no telling what might have happened. Instead of which, Mr. Applebo's face grew sleepier, and his eyes blinkier than ever, while the look which he threw at Hermione was full of appreciation of a purely impersonal character.
"Huntington Wood smelted out his alloy," he observed. "Instead of bewailing his ill-fortune and howling for sympathy, he went off and started a Home for Sick Babies. Now he is back again ... pure metal. Do you suppose that it will do him any good?"
Hermione felt that she would like to employ some of her father's forceful sea-going expressions. Here was Cécile popping up again to spoil everything at the most interesting moment! Yet not for the world would she point out to him his silly mistake. She intended that this disillusionment should come as a coup de théâtre, which would leave the poet in a state of collapse. So she swung smartly on her heel and shrugged.
"Huntington Wood no longer offers his gold ... and nobody can blame him," said she, and resumed her walk toward the beach.
They skirted the pine-scrub, passed along the edge of the marsh, then crossed the strip of sand and rock to the beach. The tide was at the last of the ebb, and as she glanced toward the spot where she had left her boat, Hermione gave a little cry of dismay.
"Look...!" she cried; "it's gone...!"
What had happened was so plainly sketched on the open page of the beach that one could run and read. Several yards above the water's edge was indicated the place where Hermione had grounded on landing, as was shown by her own tracks, left from the spot where she had stepped ashore. From farther down the beach came another trail, a man's, running to where the skiff lay, while a long furrow and some deeply gouged foot-prints showed where he had run the skiff down to the water's edge. Here, before the present rim of the tide was reached, all vanished, as though boat and man had taken flight into the air.
Hermione threw a frightened look at Applebo. The poet was standing straight as an Indian, his bushy eyebrows drawn down, and his lips puckered.
"That swine of a game-keeper...!" he growled, in his deep, though husky, bass. "I wish that I had broken his neck. Why didn't I think about his swiping the boat? I am a fool!"
CHAPTER VI
"What shall we do?" asked Hermione.
Applebo looked at her and blinked.
"Can you swim as well as you can row and shoot and walk?" he asked.
Hermione looked out across the dancing waters of the bay.
"It must be a good mile and a half to the Shark," said she, slowly. "The yawl is about half the distance, but" ... the colour flooded her face... "even under the circumstances, I should hardly care to swim to her."
"No," said the poet, "that would not do. It is very perplexing."
"Couldn't you swim out to your boat, and come back with the dinghy?" asked Hermione.
"My Finn is ashore with the dinghy, and I have no other boat. I would swim to the Shark, but I do not like to leave you here alone. That pig of a keeper probably thinks that he has got us penned, and may be back at any moment with reinforcements. He knows that we would not care to take to the back country in our bathing suits, and besides, this is a promontory and probably wire-fenced on the side of the mainland. Perhaps the best thing for us to do would be to go straight to the club and see the superintendent. I would enjoy talking to that gentleman."
"No ... no ... no!" cried Hermione. "Think of how it would look!"
"You might wait here and let me go alone."
"No..." Hermione looked at him thoughtfully. "Are you a very strong swimmer?"
"I am quite at home in the wet."
"Then, let's try for the Shark. If I get tired you can take me in tow."
"What distance do you think that you are good for?" asked the poet.
"To the yawl, at least. The chances are that we will be sighted from the Shark. In fact, we might make them see us here ... but I would rather start back. If I play out, you can put me aboard the Daffodil and keep on yourself for the schooner."
"All right. It is ignominious to be found this way on the beach. I'll hide the gun and game-bag in the bushes at the foot of that tree."
This was quickly accomplished, when the two walked side by side down the sloping beach and waded slowly into the cold water. Knee-deep, the poet, who was in the lead, turned to Hermione.
"Take it easy," said he, "and don't try to talk. If you feel tired, put one hand on my shoulder and keep paddling. I could tow you all of the way, if need be, but you must swim as far as you can, so as not to get chilled. The water is like ice in the channel."
Hermione looked at him and nodded, and again there swept through her the warm little tingling which defied the chill of the sea. Quite a new sensation this, and one which Hermione was at a loss to comprehend, for the poet irritated even while he attracted her. He had a most vexing manner of talking to without looking at her. One indifferent glance and his yellow eyes were wandering beyond, anywhere except in her direction. Now, apparently waiting for her to take to the water, he was staring sleepily down the beach, interested apparently in a flock of gulls circling about some stranded object. The warm sunlight smote on his yellow mane and threw soft shadows on the bare, saffron-coloured skin, of the texture of velvet, and glowing richly in the high lights. He splashed a little water on his powerful arms, and the long, clean-cut muscles formed shifting contours to delight a sculptor's eye. A life-sized statue in dull gold looked the poet, beautiful as a demi-god and no more human, for he carried a curious atmosphere of detachment to his surroundings, as though the milieu were alien to him and he might, at any moment, betake himself away to his own place. Even for this lovely mortal maid beside him he seemed to show a polite disinterestedness not usually to be found in his ancient prototypes, if we are to believe the classics. Hermione felt this, and it aroused in her a sudden fierce perversity. Again there came that swift desire to waken him out of his sleepy indifference by a physical violence. There were also the traitorous thrills.
"Come on..." she said, with such sharp impatience that the poet turned and blinked at her inquiringly. Hermione's blue eyes flashed, and with a sudden spiteful motion of her hand, she sent a shower of the icy water spraying over him. Applebo gasped, laughed gurglingly, and flung himself forward to swim, Hermione following.
Side by side they thrust forward through the clear, cold water. Hermione was swimming prone; the poet lounged along on his side, his head half buried, the floating hair swirling about his ears, his eyes almost closed. To Hermione he looked as though he were asleep and propelled onward by some involuntary mechanism within. For a hundred yards neither of them spoke. Hermione turned on her side, facing Applebo. The thinnest of amber gleams between the double fringe of eyelashes told that he was watching her.
"You could swim all day, Cécile..." said he.
"What right have you to call me 'Cécile'?" snapped Hermione, tired of the constantly recurring error of identity. "Even if I were..."
"I call you 'Cécile' and not 'Miss Bell' because the latter is the conventional name, and I do not know you conventionally ... and never will. Fancy my writing verses to 'Miss Bell'! As we shall never meet, in all probability, after this hour, what does it matter?"
Hermione did not reply. The water seemed to strike her with a certain chill.
"Don't you want to see me again?"
"No. My life now is happy and tranquil. If I saw more of you my fate would, no doubt, be that of so many others. No, Cécile ... I do not want to see you again."
"But perhaps I might care to see you."
"You will have the best of me in the verses I shall send you..."
"Oh, hang the verses...!" cried Hermione, and turned on to the other side.
At the end of a hundred yards, she rolled back again. The poet was harmlessly entertaining himself by taking large mouthfuls of water and spouting them into the air. Hermione burst into a ringing laugh. Applebo regarded her with sleepy inquiry.
"You look like a Triton ... with your cheeks puffed out that way," said she.
"Don't talk," replied the poet. "It adds to the effort of breathing. You look rather like a mermaid, yourself."
Hermione did not answer, and they swam on in silence through the golden August morn. The sensation of cold had passed, and it seemed to the girl that she was of one substance with the sea; of the same essence, the same elemental property, feeling neither warmth nor cold, nor fear, nor fatigue, nor anything that was alien or individual. She found herself a mermaid, at home, and felt that when it pleased her she could leave the surface to explore mysterious green depths far beneath.
He, her companion, was of it too. They were sea-mates; Triton and Nereid, subjects of the great god Poseidon, owing no fealty to any lord of the land, knowing no trammels but the wide boundaries of the ocean, that greater dominion of the world. She looked at Applebo. He appeared to be under the water, rather than upon it, and the yellow eyes rose from the swirl of brine to blink at her with comradeship. Hermione wanted to take his hand that they might plunge together to explore unknown depths ... never guessing, innocent girl, that she was well on the road to explore depths just as deep and redoubtable.
Well offshore, with their sea-world all about, a sudden odd vibration smote against their vigorous young bodies; a vibration that suggested a sound, felt rather than heard.
"Morning colours..." said the poet. "That's the gun from the Reading Room. Look!"
He flashed from the water an arm of gleaming gold from which sprang diamonds. Hermione turned upon her face to look toward the yacht flotilla. Down from the trucks of the anchored fleet fluttered the "night-caps," little tongues of black, while pennant and burgee passed them on their race aloft, and the national ensign, the Stars and Stripes, unfurled lazily from the taffrails. To their ears came, with sweet faintness, the shrilling of the sheaves as the halliards spun through them, while from a big steam-yacht, nearly a mile away, came the merry whistle of a bosun's pipe.
Hermione looked toward the Daffodil, then at Applebo.
"Rotten lack of etiquette," said he, and grinned. "I haven't any bunting."
"Why not? Are you a member of no clubs?"
"Oh, yes ... the New York and the Atlantic. There is bunting below, but I do not fly it because I am merely a parasite ... a pilot-fish."
Hermione did not answer, for their pace was a smart one and she had need of breath. Presently she asked:—
"How about the tide?"
"It is running flood out here," said Applebo, "otherwise I would not have let you swim. We are in the deep channel now, and the tide is helping. I've been gauging our drift on the shore."
The thought of the cold fathoms beneath sent no slightest chill through Hermione. She was too much a part of it all. Neither was she tired in the least. They were nearly abreast of the yawl, but seaward. Neither had suggested stopping there. Hermione looked at her companion and wondered how far he could tow her if required. Seized by a sudden impulse, she said:—
"I think that I will rest a little, please."
He was close to her in two powerful strokes that sent the water swirling in his wake, as though he had been a porpoise. His eyes gave her a swift, questioning look.
"Take my shoulder," he said. "Do you want to go to the yawl?"
"No," replied Hermione, and laid her hand on the bare, flashing shoulder offered her.
"Paddle a little so as not to get chilled," said Applebo, and started unconcernedly ahead. The tug of the heavy muscles under her hand reminded Hermione of the sensation one gets in laying the palm upon the shoulder of a galloping hunter. There was the same iron contraction, tense and quivering, to be followed by the quick relaxation, the whole evenly spaced and rhythmic as the throb of an engine. It seemed impossible that the splendid, human machine could ever tire. For several minutes she clung, resting and revelling also in the sense of being borne onward without effort. But she was not actually fatigued, and presently released her hold.
"Rested...?" he asked, looking back.
"Quite."
"Good for the rest of the voyage?"
"Yes ... and if I am not, you are. Why did you never go in for athletics?"
"They do not interest me. Games always made me feel like a performing lion."
It occurred to Hermione that they must have made him rather look like one also.
"Football?" she asked.
"I tried it ... but I used to get thinking and forget to play. Besides, I do not like to get banged about ... that is, merely for vanity. If it were to get something I wanted, it would be different."
Hermione did not reply. She watched him curiously as he lounged along. Applebo looked back and smiled. His eyes reflected the swirling green; his hair was the colour of the golden-brown sea-weed and suggested this substance as one sees it trailing from a rock in a clear tide-way. He looked more than ever like a Triton, thought the girl. All he needed was a shell-trumpet and a trident. She wondered if so pagan a creature could possess the elements of real, human feeling. At least, she confessed a little ruefully, he could arouse them!
She herself seemed to be imbued with an unnatural strength. Her long, athletic limbs smote the water with unflagging vigour ... more than that, with an exhilaration.
Just what might have been the reaction from this physical exertion had she swum the whole course, one cannot say, for the last third was destined to be uncompleted. Applebo's trained ear, buried in the brine, caught the rattle of boat-falls and the whine of sheaves, and he raised his dripping head to stare toward the Shark.
"Rest..." said he to Hermione. "Here comes your gig. They have sighted us. It's just as well; you might have got overtired."
"Bother!" said Hermione. "Now you will see me catch it from Uncle Chris." She looked in Applebo's face, which was close to hers, and laughed. Then her blue eyes opened very wide.
"What's the matter?" she cried. "You look frightened to death!"
"Do I? Put your hand on my shoulder and rest..." Hermione thought that his voice had an odd, strained note. She took his shoulder, then looked at him curiously. The poet's face, naturally a little pallid already from the immersion, had suddenly become of a sickly, bleached-out pallor, which suggested the belly of a dead fish. Hermione was seized by a sudden alarm.
"Are you tired...?" she asked, and loosed her hold of his shoulder.
Applebo gave a rather forced laugh. The colour began to return again. Then, just as Hermione expected, he assumed his sleepy, blinking expression.
"What was it?" Hermione demanded.
"A little cramp in the sole of the foot. It's gone now. Did you never have one?" He reached for her hand, and placed it on his shoulder again. "They are very painful ... but not dangerous," said he.
Their faces were very close, each to the other. Hermione looked at him questioningly. The poet smiled, and something in the flash of the strong, even teeth set Hermione's heart to thumping in the same undisciplined manner that she had previously experienced on the shore. Applebo pushed the wet hair back from his forehead. As Hermione looked at him, his amber eyes seemed to darken.
"This is 'good-bye'..." he said.
"It is your own fault."
"No ... my misfortune. There are reasons ... besides the silly ones I have given you. This is good-bye."
Hermione was conscious of a sudden fatigue. It was as though she had been under the effect of a stimulant which was suddenly withdrawn. The chill of the water struck suddenly through her. Applebo saw the light fade from the deep, violet eyes, and the sweet mouth droop a little at the corners.
"I'm so tired..." said Hermione, in a plaintive little voice.
He took her free hand and placed it on his other shoulder. Both were slowly treading water, though depending more for buoyancy on their splendid young lungs, trained to the exercise. The boat was coming on rapidly, not over three hundred yards away.
Their eyes met and clung for an instant. Those of the poet were like aquamarines, but in Hermione's there was a mistiness not of the sea. They faltered, dropped, then raised to his as if drawn by some subtle force.
"Good-bye..." said the poet.
"Good-bye ... and ... and thank you very much for ... for your kindness..."
She paused, startled at a sudden clear flame, the same amber light that had been in the yellow eyes when Applebo had turned to her after flinging to earth the game-keeper.
"You darling...!" cried the deep, throaty voice, and before Hermione knew what was happening, she felt herself drawn closely to him, and a pair of wet, salty lips were crushed for the instant against her own. Her head fell back; her eyes closed; the water swirled about her ears. Then she felt two strong arms supporting her beneath the shoulders, raising her bodily from the jealous grip of the sea. Blindly she took a stroke or two, then looked dazedly at the poet.
"You ... you kissed me..."
"Yes, Cécile ... it was only good-bye."
Hermione could find nothing to say, but indeed there was no time. Up crashed the gig under the powerful strokes of the crew. Heldstrom's anxious eyes had noted the drooping of the red-coiffed head, and his thunderous, "Pull, you lubbers ... pull!" reached the swimmers from a distance. Fortunately, the kiss could not be observed, the two heads having been directly in line during this indiscreet performance.
The boat foamed alongside. "Vat's dis ... vat's dis?" cried Heldstrom. He leaned over the gunnel and lifted Hermione aboard, when she sank down on a thwart, a limp, dejected mermaid, gazing mutely at the poet. "Vere is your boat?" demanded Heldstrom. "Vat you mean, svimmin' ar'round in der vater mit dis feller...?"
He turned to glare at Applebo ... and his jaw dropped. Hermione saw him pass his hand across his eyes in a dazed sort of way. The poet blinked back at him inscrutably, but it struck Hermione that his face was very white, and she wondered if he had the cramp in his foot again.
"You vas ... der Pilot-vish...?" said Heldstrom, in an odd, tremulous voice.
"I am Mr. Applebo," answered the poet, in his silky bass. "The game-keeper yonder confiscated Miss Bell's boat. He sneaked around and swiped it. You had better get her aboard before she takes a chill."
Heldstrom was still staring in the same dazed, bewildered way.
"Vere haf I seen you...?" he demanded.
"Have you seen me...?" retorted Applebo. "I don't remember you."
Heldstrom seemed to recover himself with an effort.
"You comin' mit us?" he asked of Applebo.
"No, thanks. I am not tired. I will swim to my yawl."
"You won't take a cramp...?" cried Hermione.
"Oh, no. That will not return. Good-bye ... and I hope you will be none the worse for your long swim."
"Good-bye..." said Hermione, faintly, and added, with the slightest catch in her voice, "and I'm not Cécile ... I'm Hermione!"
But, alas! these words were lost to the Pilot-fish, whose yellow head was buried with his long, powerful overhanded stroke.