CHAPTER VII
When Mr. Huntington Wood, at luncheon aboard the Shark, had asserted that the real explanation for the extraordinary devotion of the Pilot-fish was a sentimental emotion, inspired by one of the Misses Bell, Cécile found much matter for her maiden meditation.
Not for one instant did it occur to this self-satisfied young lady that the cause of this infatuation might be one of her sisters. Paula was not the sort of girl of whom one would think in this connection, and Hermione was still regarded by Cécile as a mere child, though, as a matter of fact, the younger sister's superior height and dark colouring might readily have caused the careless observer to consider her the elder. Cécile was apt to be somewhat careless in her observation of anything outside of her own interests. Wherefore, she complacently appropriated Mr. Applebo in her mind as her own enamoured swain.
For all of her innumerable conquests, Cécile found, in the peculiar methods of the Pilot-fish, something singularly piquant. Here was a lover who asked absolutely nothing in return for his passion. He merely desired to be in her general neighbourhood, to accomplish which he put at inconvenience nobody but himself. To be sure, many others had striven for this same result, but these had insisted on a gradual constriction of what might be considered a "general neighbourhood," eventually finding the length of a transome all too wide a separation. Where Cécile had previously been compelled to throw cold water on her all too ardent suitors, here was one who insisted on at least a half mile of this pure element, in varying depths, between them.
Thinking it over in the privacy of her room, Cécile decided that this point of view was just as extreme, of its kind, as that which demanded but a single deck-chair for two people. Moreover, for Mr. Applebo to choose his own line of conduct in the matter was not good discipline. Cécile was in the habit of herself outlining the régime to be observed in affairs of this kind, and she did not care to have it prescribed for her. In addition to this, Cécile had been very much interested in the distant views which she had got of the poet, and was curious to see him at close range. All that Wood had told them of his eccentric personality had served to sharpen this interest, and the girl found herself wondering if perhaps he might not be the one who was to take captive her heart and her desire. She had always felt that the man to do this would not be the ordinary individual. It gave her a very lively emotion to picture this fair young viking threading his way through fog and storm, reef and shoal, drawn onward by his unselfish, unchanging devotion to her ideal self. Cécile decided that such fidelity merited at least the reward of some slight token of her appreciation.
Wherefore, she decided to attach Mr. Applebo forthwith, to keep him on the end of her line until she made up her mind just what she wanted to do with him. She came to this conclusion shortly after awakening, and she was lazily studying out some plan for bringing the Pilot-fish within reach of her landing-net, when there descended through the skylight of her room the sound of the quartermaster's voice, as in low but excited tones he conveyed to Captain Heldstrom certain information regarding "der Bilot-vish..."
Cécile lay listening, and a moment later heard Heldstrom's gruff voice say, "Yoomp back in der gig ... get a move on you, now ... lower avay, dere..." followed by the squeal of the falls and the splash of the boat as it took the water just outside her port-hole. Cécile looked out, but could see nothing of interest. She was still looking when she heard Olesen growl something about, "Miss Hermione svimmin' a r'race mit der Bilot-vish..."
Cécile was "brought up all standing" at the coupling of these names. She sprang out of bed, slipped on her kimono, and hastened to the companionway, where she thrust up through the hatch a very lovely face, flushed and still dewy with sleep, a heavy, opalescent chevelure which seemed to gather all of the sunlight in its vicinity, and two eyes of a deep, misty grey.
Even as she looked, the gig, with Heldstrom in the stern, leaped clear of the schooner's side.
"What's the matter, Olesen?" cried Cécile, alarmed.
The quartermaster turned, with a tug at his watch-cap.
"It vas Mees Hermione out dere svimmin' ar'round mid der Bilot-vish. Dot's mighty funny. She vent avay mit her skiff, and here she comes back mitoudt it und der Bilot-vish. Dot's awful funny."
He handed her his glasses, which Cécile raised to her eyes. The faces of the two swimmers were quite distinct, but as she looked Hermione's head was eclipsed by that of Applebo. Cécile could see that they were apparently treading water and waiting for the boat.
"How very odd!" exclaimed Cécile, sharply. "What is that mad girl up to now, I wonder?"
Much disturbed, she laid down the glass ... just in time to miss the cream of the performance! Had Cécile witnessed that good-bye kiss it would have changed considerably subsequent events, and have saved herself much wear and tear. But when she looked again, Heldstrom was lifting Hermione into the gig, and she caught the flash of Applebo's hand as he flourished it in farewell. Cécile then went below and waited impatiently for her sister's arrival on board.
A few minutes later she heard outside a light step and the swish of a wet bathing skirt as Hermione hurried to her room.
"Is that you, Hermione?" called Cécile.
"Yes." Hermione looked in at Cécile's door. Her face was quite pale, and her eyes looked almost black.
"What have you been up to?" cried Cécile.
"I'll tell you all about it when I've changed..."
"Can't you relieve my curiosity a little, at once? What became of your boat ... and Applebo..."
"Oh, well..." Hermione gave a brief and rather impatient outline of her adventure. Cécile listened attentively.
"How dreadful!" she exclaimed. "I hope that this will teach you not to run about alone in that wild way. Now go and take off your wet things and get a pot of good hot coffee. You look very badly."
It occurred to Hermione that, since she looked so badly, her sister might have sacrificed her own curiosity and let her change before telling her tale. But she was feeling rather gone, and with very little fight left in her body, so she turned and hurried off without a word.
Her maid gave her a vigorous rub-down, then put her to bed, and brought coffee, with eggs and bacon, which Hermione devoured with great enthusiasm, despite the varying emotions through which she had so recently passed. Her breakfast finished, Hermione fell into a deep and refreshing sleep, from which she was awakened a couple of hours later by a stamping and roaring overhead, which she recognised as proceeding from her father, and from which she gathered that he was being put in possession of the facts concerning her adventure. This was indeed the case, but in the meantime there had arrived from the diplomatic superintendent of the gun club a note of apology and regret for the too great zeal of his minion.
Wherefore, balked in his opportunity to raise a tremendous row, Captain Bell was working off steam in storming about and vituperating the club, Shoal Harbour, the State of Maine, the Pilot-fish, Hermione, and generally, as sailors put it, "cursing everything a foot high and a minute old."
This innocent pastime exhausted, it occurred to him that, after all, he owed a duty to the Pilot-fish, but for whom Hermione would have been subjected to great indignity. From the account given him by Cécile, Mr. Applebo had apparently done a hammer-throw with the game-keeper, then swum off to the schooner with Hermione trailing from his shoulders. Captain Bell was a stickler for etiquette, and therefore he decided to call immediately upon the poet and express his obligation.
"You say that you have seen him somewhere?" he asked of Heldstrom.
Christian Heldstrom shook his big, shaggy head. There was a distant brooding look in his blue eyes, usually so keen and alert.
"I am not sure. Dere vas somedings ... like an echo in his voice. Like somebody I haf known ... long ago, in Norvay ... or some odder place. His name, Applebo, vas Scandinavian, too. I do not know."
Bell shot him a quick, curious look. Heldstrom looked old ... and it suddenly struck the choleric owner that his sailing-master was getting on in years. He observed that Heldstrom's thick, curling hair, formerly of a rich, lustrous chestnut colour, was grizzled almost to the point of being white, while the bushy eyebrows, heavy moustache, and thick, curling beard were fast becoming snowy. The big Norwegian's face was very deeply lined, and at this moment the creases looked like those of age and suffering, rather than the result of exposure to all winds and weather. Bell was a little startled, for Heldstrom was but slightly older than himself, and it occurred to the ex-naval officer that if Heldstrom were becoming an old man, then he must be doing the same.
"He seems to have given you a bad turn," said Bell, crossly. "You look as if you'd just come from a funeral."
"Und I feel like it, too..." muttered Heldstrom. "It is a long time since I have let myselluf t'ink of my old home. Someding about dis yoong man br'rought back der fjords und der midnight sun und der big fires on der heart' of my fadder's gaad..."
"You think he's a Scandinavian?" demanded Bell.
"No, zir; I t'ink he vas American like myselluf. But he is from Scandinavian stock. It is so t'at he can find his way ar'round in der fog..."
And his deep-set blue eyes roamed across the intervening water to where the Daffodil lay at anchor.
Bell ordered away the gig, and as he was about to set off on his formal call, he turned to see Cécile, fresh and lovely, in pink muslin, with a little panama hat wound about with a rose-coloured pugaree. In her hand was a tiny parasol to match. Cécile made it a point never to wear anything nautical.
"Huh..." snorted Bell; "where are you going?"
"With you, papa."
"But I am going to call on the Pilot-fish."
"So I imagined. As Hermione's sister I thought that I ought to go with you. You see, in a way, I stand in loco parentis."
Bell wrinkled up his nose. He was, on the whole, pleased with the idea, but he guessed that Cécile's object was less inspired by a sense of social obligation than a feminine curiosity to see the man reputed to be following them about through hopeless love of herself. He determined to tease her a little.
"Oh, it ain't necessary. I'm parent enough. It would only embarrass him if you were to go too. He's shy as a red-head duck."
Cécile bit her lip. "Very well," said she. "If you don't want me. I merely felt that I ought to go because the situation was a rather delicate one ... those two wandering about at daybreak in their bathing suits. My instinct told me that some official recognition of such an incident should be taken by a woman of the family; it seems scarcely the thing to be left for two men..."
"Oh, well, well..." interrupted her father. "Come along then. I ... eh ... it had never occurred to me in just that light. You are quite correct, my dear, quite..." He ushered her to the rail with great ceremony. Yachting etiquette requires that the owner shall be the first one to board his vessel and the last to leave her. Bell invariably observed these details, which are, of course, modelled after naval etiquette. There was a little smile in the corner of Cécile's pretty mouth as she descended the accommodation-ladder. These three girls were all quite able to manage their father: Cécile by guile, Paula by sweetness, and Hermione by violence. Heldstrom, on the other hand, managed all three by the same quality: quiet, dominant force of will which was, of course, backed by deep affection.
Off they started then, crisply and with four lusty oars. Bell would have no "chugging stink-pot" for a gig, although not disdaining power for errands and market work. His gig was a beautifully modelled, diminutive man-o'-war's whaleboat, with the official arrow on the bow, the insignia of a gig. She slipped through the water like a barracouta, light, easy-pulling, buoyant and dry in any sea-way, and swift under sail. The distance to the Daffodil was quickly spanned, and they drew close aboard to find Mr. Applebo, immaculately clad in ducks, regaling himself with tea and macaroons in the cock-pit.
As the gig shot alongside, the poet arose and saluted. In response to his deep-toned order, the Finn squeezed out of a small hatchway up forward in a way that suggested a crab coming out of a hole, and sidled aft, boat-hook in hand. Cécile observed that the bow-oar, an Irishman, crossed himself.
Mr. Applebo's manner was dignified and polite, but had he been discovered sitting atop of an iceberg in Davis' Strait he could not have been more cool and distant. His leonine features betrayed no hint of any sort of emotion, and the deep, amber eyes, half hidden behind his long, dark eyelashes, blinked sleepily at his guests.
"Good-morning," said he, and bowed again. Seeing a little hesitation on the face of Captain Bell, he added, "Will you do me the honour to come aboard?"
Had the words been rather, "Will you do me the honour to clear out and not bother me," the hospitable desire behind them could not have been more distinctly expressed. Bell was sadly taken aback. He had expected to be met with embarrassment, which he would graciously seek to allay. While himself the heart and soul of hospitality, he always clung to a certain punctilious formality and detested the social negligée of the Corinthian sailor, in spite of which it was a little discomposing to be received aboard a little two-by-six shallop with this, "Sir, I have the honour to request..." manner. If Cécile shared his surprise she did not show it. Leaning slightly forward she regarded the poet with that expression of polite inquiry which one might bestow upon an unfamiliar entrée served at the table of a friend.
A person familiar with good form, however, need never be more than momentarily embarrassed. Captain Bell arose as though there were but three joints in his body, only one of which was needed for his bow. "Thank you," said he, and turned to Cécile, who floated up from her cushions and gave the tips of her fingers to her father. Bell preceded her aboard, using two joints in the manœuvre, and shook hands with Mr. Applebo, whose expression suggested a person roused from a beauty-sleep. "H'm ... h'm ... daughter, permit me to present Mr. Applebo..." said Bell to Cécile, and added, turning to the Pilot-fish, "My daughter, Miss Bell ... h'm ... huh!"
With the face of one oppressed by the recollection of a sad dream, Mr. Applebo assisted Cécile to the deck of the Daffodil.
"Pray, come below," said he, "the glare is rather intense."
A one-and-a-half-jointed acknowledgment from Bell, and a swift, curious look from Cécile, were the receipt of this invitation. The Pilot-fish shot back the sliding hatch, and led the way down, the others following with something of the manner of people who inspect an apartment still occupied by a polite but greatly bored tenant.
On entering the cabin, the two guests were forcibly struck by its peculiar atmosphere of warm and immaculate emptiness. One does not, as a rule, associate warmth and emptiness, but the former quality was, in this case, conveyed by the peculiar rich and mellow light which pervaded the place, and which Cécile quickly discovered to be due to the sun shining through amber-coloured skylights and reflected from the yellow enamel of the paint-work. It was a peculiar effect, but, unlike that of red, blue, or green lights, extremely restful and agreeable.
People whose homes are on the wave usually like to surround themselves with personal trinkets suggestive of the land, which is, after all, their natural element. Cécile's room aboard the Shark was a sans-souci of delicious luxury in exquisite taste. But here in the Daffodil's cabin, aside from a vase of yellow roses, there was not one single object which did not have its distinct and practical use. Not a picture, not a curio nor knick-knack of any sort. Books there were, no doubt, in the double row of lockers on either side, but nothing of ornamentation. There were two big nickelled lamps set in gimbals, one over a gravity table, the other over the head of the single bunk. A large watch hanging on the forward bulkhead furnished noiselessly the time; above it were a telltale compass and a small aneroid barometer, while a battered and archaic-looking sextant was jammed against the bulkhead under a yellow leather strap.
The poet produced a couple of camp-chairs, which he opened and offered to his guests.
"I hope that you do not object to yellow light," said he. "Yellow is my colour. I find it intellectually stimulating."
"It is said to be the mental colour," observed Cécile.
"In France," Bell remarked, "they say that it is the symbol of a mauvais ménage. But since you are not married it does not matter."
"I am wedded to my Muse," said Applebo, "and it is true that we sometimes quarrel. Perhaps that is the reason."
Bell shot his daughter a glance which said as plainly as words, "There! I said that he was balmy!" The poet looked sleepily unconscious. The dreamy expression of his eyes would have led one to believe that he was dreaming of meadows sown with asphodel. Bell made noises in his fat throat.
"H'm ... huh ... huh ... my daughter and I have called to thank you, Mr. Applebo, for your services rendered this morning to an indiscreet member of our family ... h'm ... huh..."
The poet made a graceful, undulating motion with his hand, expressive and deprecatory. Cécile, regarding him intently, decided that he was quite correct in saying that yellow was his colour. Her eyes clung to him, fascinated by his odd, unusual type. The yawl swung a trifle on her cable, and a golden shaft of light which struck diagonally through the skylight, travelled slowly across the bulkhead and bathed the leonine head of Applebo in a golden effulgence, wreathing his wavy hair with a true aureole. A golden man he looked. Cécile was unable to take her eyes from him.
Cécile was unable to take her eyes from him
"My sister is much to be congratulated," said she, "in finding a champion at the critical moment."
"Oh," said the poet, "the one to be congratulated is the keeper. Miss Bell was about to fill him full of shot."
"What!" cried Bell, much startled.
"Quite so. He meant to drag her off by force and she felt differently about it. When I arrived she had him covered and was promising to blow his head off." He blinked.
"What!" cried the horrified Bell.
"How terrible!" exclaimed Cécile.
"It would have served him right," said the Pilot-fish. "If she had done so, I would have dug a hole in the sand and buried him and we would have said nothing about it."
"But ... but ... Bless my soul..." cried the horrified Bell. "It would have been .... eh ... manslaughter!"
"This fellow deserved to be slaughtered," observed the poet. "However, he was so fortunate as to escape. I persuaded him to go away. Then, while Miss Bell was recovering from her agitation, the scoundrel stole her boat. Unfortunately, my man was ashore with my only boat, and as I did not like to leave your daughter alone, and she assured me that she was a strong swimmer, we decided to swim. There was no great risk, as I could have towed her the whole distance at a pinch."
All of this in a sleepy voice, while the screened eyes blinked drowsily from Bell to Cécile. The girl's scrutiny was more intent than she realised, and her soft cheeks were slightly pale. Little lines had appeared, running vertically between her brows. One would have said that she was agitated at thoughts suggested by the recital of her sister's adventure, but that was not the case. Cécile was inwardly stirred at something in the quality of the deep, monotonous voice, low and vibrant as the purr of a great cat. The personality of Applebo had upon her an odd, exciting influence.
In rather ridiculous contrast to the effect he produced on the inner emotions of this accomplished coquette, the poet was sitting in the most uninspiring manner possible to conceive. He was perched on the extreme rim of his bunk, which, being rather low, brought his big knees chest-high. His feet, of generous proportion and elegantly shod in rubber-soled buckskin, were "toeing in," his forearms rested across his thighs, and his back was domed like the shell of a tortoise, so that the long, wavy hair clustered about his shoulders as he turned his head from one guest to the other. Add to this a sleepy, blinking face and a wide mouth, which seemed ever ready to yawn, and it seems odd that Mr. Applebo should have caused any acceleration of the pulses in a young lady who had successfully weathered many an impassioned declaration. As a matter of fact, it was the suggestion of swift, latent force masked in this somnolent pose which was discomposing. There was a deep, slumberous gleam in the amber eyes which told of a very wakeful spirit within, while the muscular contour of the inert limbs promised an output of tireless strength which their present laxity sought in vain to conceal. Both Captain Bell and Cécile felt the existence of this masked vitality, the former with the admiration of a man who had himself been athletic in his youth, and Cécile with the aforesaid stirring of some new and unclassified emotion.
"Fancy your being able to drag a big girl through the water for a mile or more!" said he. "You must be a very powerful man."
"It would be easier for a good swimmer to carry a person for a mile in the water than on the land," said Applebo. "The water takes most of the weight. Besides, one could never tire in performing a service for so charming a girl as your daughter."
Bell looked startled. "H'm ... huh..." he began, but Cécile interrupted.
"If you find a service of that kind so stimulating, I should think that you would lend yourself oftener to it."
There was the least touch of sharpness in her tone. Applebo eyed her inquiringly.
"I do," said he, "but in spirit rather than in body. Thus, following you" ... there was the faintest emphasis on the "you" ... "about all summer has been a sentimental though unasked service. All services should be unasked; otherwise they are obligations. It has been a service ... and I have never tired of it."
Bell's jaw slightly dropped. Cécile's glance was very intense. Applebo blinked.
"Huh..." said Bell. "It seems to me that the service was on our part, seein' that we were doing your thinkin' for you."
"The leader must always do the thinking for the one who follows," murmured the poet. "The stray dog who attaches himself to your heels follows blindly where you lead because of his unasked and often undesired devotion. The pilot-fish does not dictate his course to the shark."
Bell looked confused, then turned a slightly richer shade of pink. The idea was slowly permeating his intelligence that Applebo was chaffing them, and that so subtly that one hardly knew how to reply. The same idea had entered the head of Cécile. To this pampered beauty the idea that a young man should deliberately amuse himself at her expense was maddening. Cécile had plenty of fight in her and she was active-minded as well, and she did not propose to be set dancing on a string like a marionette for the pleasure of this sleepy-eyed enigma.
"After all," said she, "one might consider that we were quits. You furnish us with some idle amusement which otherwise we might lack while we furnish you with some of our mind, which otherwise you might lack."
"Precisely," drawled the poet; "a fair exchange."
Bell cackled outright. The colour flared into the face of Cécile. Applebo blinked. Captain Bell came to the rescue of his daughter.
"Aboard the Shark," said he, "you are a sort of benefactor. You instil our monotonous lives with a great excitement. All hands make bets on how long after us you will arrive in port."
"In that case," said Applebo, in a tone of dreamy regret, "I must sometimes have thoughtlessly spoiled the game by carelessly permitting myself to arrive before you. Hereafter, I will not follow you out so soon."
Bell's face grew rather purple. While obliged to admit the dull sailing qualities of the Shark, he had never particularly relished comment on the topic, but to have it so "rubbed in" by a little sixty-foot sword-fisher was infuriating.
"Of course," he snapped, "on these short runs it's not difficult for you to pass us. But I am afraid that you may not find it so easy to stay with us for the next fortnight or so. We're tired of mud-holing and rottin' around with the small fry."
"If you are tired of me," observed the poet, "you know that you have only to say so. Not for worlds would I persecute you with undesired attentions."
"Not a bit of it!" exclaimed Cécile. "We find you very amusing. The question is, whether you will find your occupation so amusing from now on. As papa says, we are planning some good offshore runs. I do hope that you will not find your duties too arduous."
Here was a challenge directly thrown down. Applebo looked as if the mere thought of it made him overtired.
"Come, come..." said Bell, with an assumption of his hearty manner. "'Fess up now. What is your real object in trailin' us around? Wood says you find the proximity of three pretty girls stimulatin' to your poetry. Is that true?"
"Quite." Applebo looked slowly at Cécile. "Huntington exaggerates. The proximity of one of them would be quite enough. The focus of so many romantic and sentimental aspirations must, by its mere juxtaposition, inspire by repercussion the acme of poetic expression."
"H'm ... huh ... hough ... I don't precisely understand..." said Bell, with perfect truth.
Cécile drew back with a little sniff. Applebo showed actual signs of awakening. He leaned toward Bell and spread out his large, well-shaped hands.
"We poets," he said, "are souls highly sensitised to extrinsic emotions. We are less sentient beings than æsthetic interpreters of the passionate vibrations of art or nature. Like the æolian harp responding to the dalliance of a zephyr, thus do we translate soul-talk of alien origin."
He beamed at the agonised Bell, who was panting for air.
"Just as the compass swings to meet its electric affinity," pursued Applebo, in a rapt voice, "so doth the spirit of the Muse within us react to the atmosphere of Love, that divinest of all motive force. It is thus that I find your aura so stimulating" ... he looked at Cécile... "like tabasco on an oyster." He gave her a celestial smile.
"I see," she answered. "You use us as a sort of stove."
"Less for its warmth," said Applebo, "than for the fuel with which it is fed."
Captain Bell mopped his brow. "I am a practical sort of person myself," said he, vaguely. "Why don't you accept our invitations and get your inspiration at short range?"
"To do that," said the poet, "would be to sacrifice my sacred Muse upon the altar of my own selfishness. No. All that I ask is merely to continue as I am, a humble and devoted little pilot-fish."
Bell and Cécile both cast him glances of quick suspicion, but the face of Mr. Applebo expressed no more than a sad and somewhat sleepy resignation. Bell rose to his feet, and Cécile, somewhat reluctantly, did the same. She felt that she was quitting a considerable loser.
"Well," remarked Bell, a little snappishly, "keep on being a pilot-fish, if that suits you better. As far as following us is concerned, you can do that and welcome. Follow us till..."
"Oh, papa...!"
"H'm ... huh ... h'm ... but I'm afraid you'll find that you've got some swimming cut out for you that will wear the brisket off you."
"Where the Shark swims," said Applebo, "the Pilot-fish will follow."
"We will see ... h'm ... we will see," said Captain Bell, oracularly.
CHAPTER VIII
It is sad to chronicle the fact that, on the way back to the Shark, Captain Bell's language was not such as a maiden's ears should hear. But it is doubtful if Cécile's ears did hear it, such paternal explosions being somewhat too common of occurrence to command attention. On the other hand, the treatment which she had just received at the hands of the poet was an entirely new experience, and, in consideration of what Wood had told her, one that puzzled her mightily. There was naturally no way of poor Cécile's knowing that the poet took her for her sister Hermione, and was working off a little artistic pique, due to the return of verses, which had cost him gallons of tea and many pounds of macaroons.
Bell was going off at intervals, like an automatic fog-horn.
"The —— fool!" he stormed, to the expressionless delight of his crew, which pulled away with stony faces. "Is he a wild ass of the desert, or does he think I am, or both? What in thunder did he mean by all that rot about Hermione shooting the keeper and he standin' by to bury him in the sand? Was the fool tryin' to josh me, I'd like to know? And all that slush about percussion somethin' and poetic interpretation by an æolian harp crackin' on ... Did you ever see such a cub-faced, swab-headed guillemot? Soul-talk! I want a drink..."
These and other winged words were lost upon Cécile. She was trying to hit on some solution of Applebo's treatment of herself. Certainly there had been some hidden meaning in the looks which he had turned upon her; something which suggested a motive for his peculiar behaviour. Cécile, who found it quite impossible to construe any situation as unflattering to herself, decided that the behaviour of the poet was nothing less than sheer "bluff." Either he was trying to disguise some deep, inner emotion, or else he had wished to mislead Captain Bell as to the true reason for his constant attendance. Cécile did not for an instant take seriously Applebo's sentimental effusions about the effect upon his poetry produced by the propinquity of the Shark. She was quite convinced that there was a very deep and subtle method underlying his apparently foolish pose. Heretofore she had been divided as to whether he must be considered as a really smitten lover or merely as a sort of half-witted loon, which, like all of its species, was quite at home on the wave. She had even thought it possible that he might be a fool of whimsical ideas who had actually attached himself to the Shark from sheer lacking objective. This theory had been overturned by Wood's revelations, and she had accompanied her father to call on Applebo with the secret determination of discovering what was really underneath his eccentric behaviour.
The sleepy quick-wittedness; the supine manner of attempting to disguise a fierce forcefulness beneath; the deep, resonant voice, silky and warm; the inscrutable, leonine face with its mane of tawny hair; the tout ensemble, had deeply impressed Cécile, though she was not yet conscious of how deeply. But she knew that Applebo was very far from being the pilot-fish which he claimed to be. A chunk of pork on a hook, perhaps, but a pilot-fish ... no! Cécile had a vague instinct that she was shortly to be more fully informed in the matter.
Notwithstanding which, she arrived at the schooner in a state of extreme irritation, while her father had subsided into a sub-acute exasperation expressed by grunts and growls. A certain curiosity had backed up the real motive for the call aboard the Daffodil, and this curiosity had been politely but effectually flouted, and both father and daughter much resented it. Especially the daughter, as much trifling with the affections of many young men is a poor way for a girl to get in training to have a young man treat her with lèse majesté.
On coming alongside of the schooner they found a boat from the Arcturus, and Cécile's temper was not improved at hearing the gay laughter from the deck, where Hermione, Paula, Huntington Wood, and Mr. Poole were having a very good time. Cécile was one of those girls who grow restive at the sight of attractive men in the possession of other girls, so she proceeded at once to break up the partie carrée, taking Wood away from Paula as one might deprive a child of some object with which it was too young to play.
All were curious to hear about the call upon Mr. Applebo, however, especially as the red and belligerent expression of Captain Bell's face showed that it had not been in all ways agreeable.
"Your friend Applebo," said Cécile to Wood, "is, without exception, the rudest man I ever met."
Hermione raised her eyebrows. Wood, always loyal to the absent, protested.
"Oh, no!" said he, "odd and eccentric and all of that, but not really rude...."
"Call it what you like," said Cécile. "We had to board his nasty little boat practically by force, after which he did nothing but sit there and make sneering remarks."
"That was the only way he managed to keep awake," growled Bell, who was pacing up and down his quarter-deck with short, impatient steps.
"Apparently," said Cécile, "he was trying to be witty at our expense. You should have heard what papa said about him coming back...."
"We did ... from the time you left the yawl," said Hermione.
Cécile gave a mirthless little laugh. "Fancy your being so silly as to say that he was in love with me!"
"Huntington never said that," observed Hermione. "He merely said that Applebo was in love with somebody aboard the Shark."
There was a laugh, which was quickly checked, for Cécile's face became suddenly crimson. She bit her lip, and her grey eyes actually filled with tears of sheer mortification. Wood went quickly to her rescue.
"Up to this time," said he, "Harold has probably fancied himself in love with an Ideal. Now that he has seen the Real, we may look for rapid developments."
"Huh..." grunted Captain Bell, whose promenade had brought him within earshot, "he's a balm, that's what's the matter with him. Said it wasn't Hermione he rescued, but the gamekeeper. Said Hermione was about to assassinate him, and that if she had he would have dug a hole in the sand and shoved him in ... huh ... h'm ... balmy as a spring dream...."
"He's quite capable of it," said Wood, and glanced at Hermione. There was a vivid red splash in either of the girl's cheeks, and her eyes were like sapphires.
"By Jove..." Wood laughed. "Look at Hermione! I believe she would have helped him! What a pair of savages!"
Bell stopped in his beat and threw one arm around Paula. He made no secret of the fact that she was his favourite daughter; a preference which aroused no jealousy in the hearts of the other girls, as both appreciated fully Paula's sweetness of disposition and invariable unselfishness. She was, in a way, the mean between the extremes of Cécile's calculating and Hermione's impetuous nature; also she acted as a sort of fender between her sisters and their father. On the whole, the family was an affectionate one, but high spirits and diverse dispositions made the offices of a peace advocate indispensable.
"D'ye know what I think?" snapped Bell. "I think that the scoundrel is secretly in love with Paula, and he ain't man enough to step up and say so!"
"What makes you think that?" Wood asked.
"Logical exclusion. Here he has performed a service for Hermione, and lets it drop there, and Cécile goes aboard his boat and he sits there and jollies her. What was it he said ... that about the idle amusement he furnished bein' a fair exchange for the use of our minds ... eh ... what was it, Cécile...?"
"Some rubbish ... I don't know..." Cécile turned away, angrily.
"Besides," continued Bell, "Paula is the only one he has ever sighted close aboard. All right, old man" ... he glanced toward the Daffodil ... "we'll see how much of a test you can stand. Wait 'til I romp you up and down the coast from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Hatteras a few times!" He glanced at Wood. "Come with us, Huntington. You'll see some sport. The beggar means to follow, if he can."
Wood hesitated. Cécile was looking at him, ready to give a little sign of affirmation, but to her extreme surprise, Wood glanced, not at her, but at Paula. Cécile's eyes followed his. Paula was looking at Wood, and as he hesitated, her face grew suddenly pale.
"Do you all want me?" asked Wood, smiling.
"Of course we do," answered Hermione. "Do come."
Paula echoed the invitation, a little faintly, and Cécile, in a cool, indifferent way. She was wondering at the peculiar expression she had caught in Paula's eyes as they met those of Wood.
"Then I'll go with great delight," said Wood. "But I don't think that the chase will last very long, when it comes to offshore work. You can hardly expect a little yawl like that to keep up with a schooner of this size."
"I'll back him," said Hermione. "The Shark is about as speedy as an oyster-float."
"Just the same," snapped Bell, "I'll make you a bet, young lady, that we will have lost our pilot-fish at the end of ten days."
"For what...?" asked Hermione.
"For a month's allowance. Double or none. Come now, do you take me?"
"Done with you!" said Hermione, promptly.
Huntington Wood was giving a dinner party ashore that night, and Cécile, according to her custom when dining out, spent the late hours of the afternoon in repose. Her room aboard the Shark was as big and luxuriously furnished as though it had belonged to a modern country-house, and she slept in a brass bed securely bolted to the deck. Adjoining was a boudoir and bath.
In a flowered kimono, her bright hair unconfined, Cécile was taking her beauty-rest and turning in her mind the events of the day. Piqued as she had been at Applebo's behaviour, she was by this time angry ... and a little startled to find how insistently his personality occupied her thoughts. She would have resented this more had it not been that this retrospect was by no means disagreeable.
The startling feature of this obsession was the vividness with which she could recall every detail. Cécile had only to close her eyes to see again the big-framed, loosely-held figure, the sleepy, leonine face with its mane of wavy hair, sun-bleached on top of the head to the colour of old oakum, but holding rich, coppery tints in its depths. Facial features were shockingly vivid; the high, wide cheekbones, the cheeks themselves cut out to a degree which gave the mouth an appearance of being slightly pushed out, the upper lip slightly raised in the middle. Most distinct was the set of the eyes; the leonine "bumps" with the bushy eyebrows, the eyes themselves of a clear, deep amber and fringed about with lashes that looked black, but were not.
She thought, with a gust of irritation, of the poet's blinking, indifferent expression and of the sudden gracious change in the cat-like face when he smiled. The smile humanised him, it was so kind. And it reassured one, in revealing teeth that were straight and white and even, and not feline. The recollection to most stir Cécile's pulse was that of the deep, resonant purring voice, which seemed to have left its echoes in her ears, as the voice of the sea leaves its murmur in a conch-shell.
"If it weren't for that catty, mocking pose," thought Cécile, "how attractive he would be!" She pictured him as open and frank and sincere ... looking into her eyes with no veil across his own ... Cécile's heart beat furiously. She wondered if she were going to make a fool of herself and fall in love with the only man who had ever treated her with disrespect.
Perhaps the factor which made Applebo's memory so intrusive was his enigmatical position. From thinking of him Cécile would ponder, until her head ached, upon what could be his real motive. She was now convinced that his attendance was not aimless. She was also sure that if it were due to a sentimental emotion toward herself she would very soon know of it, now that they had met. There had certainly been some deep meaning, some understanding in those, regards which he had given her.
Thinking of these things she fell into a doze, only to be pursued by vague images of her waking thoughts. Then, just before fully awakening, she saw, as in a camera-obscura, the face of Applebo regarding her with a lazy, ironical smile. This was not fancy, but an actual vision, which faded slowly as she awoke.
"Bother the man!" cried Cécile, fiercely to herself. "One would think that I were an ingenue of eighteen, haunted by visions of my first beau!"
Many men had called Cécile cold, unfeeling, heartless ... all of which terms were, from the man's point of view, quite correct. From Cécile's, they were wrong. As she saw it, love was a game in which one must realise, just as in football, the possibility of getting hurt. A coward or cry-baby had no right to play it. If any man could hurt her, as she was said to have hurt others, he was quite at liberty to go ahead and do it. It was, perhaps, in the hunt for the person who could do this that she had ruthlessly vivisected so many hearts. Cécile felt instinctively that she possessed no lack of deep feeling, if the right man were to claim it.
But Cécile knew quite well that she was not "in love at first sight." She was momentarily fascinated, perhaps, but mingled with her sentiment there was not the least trace of sympathetic or tender interest. On the contrary, the thought of Applebo exasperated her. She felt that she would like to wake him out of his lethargy with a hat-pin or the butt-end of an oar. Something in his sleek, smooth complacency aroused the desire to do him a damage.
Tired at length of the changeless object of her fancy, she tried to put it from her mind, but in vain. Then, finding herself unable to stem the tide of her imaginings, she tried drifting with them, to arrive ultimately at the startling knowledge that she was quite wild to see the poet again. She was also forced to admit, for however much she might deceive others Cécile was always candid with herself, that, were he to exert his magnetic potentialities toward that end, it was very possible that she might wind up by falling very desperately in love with Mr. Harold Applebo.
Hardly had she arrived at this rather humiliating conclusion when the maid entered, handed her a note, and went out again. The post-mark was a local one, and the handwriting of the copy-plate regularity which one associates with bills. Nevertheless, Cécile's heart beat with a sudden increased force as she tore open the letter. Inside was a single sheet of corn-coloured note-paper covered by a fine regular calligraphy, which Cécile recognised at a glance as being identical with that in which some of Hermione's letters had been addressed. She held it to the waning light from her port-hole, and read as follows:—
TO CÉCILE
Lips oft sing loudest when the heart is numb;
'Tis when Love enters there, though all unseen,
These scarlet courtiers, bowing to their Queen,
Knowing their hollowness, are stricken dumb.
Thus, ere Love reached me with his tiny dart,
Clamoured I vainly. Many a lover's moan
And sigh proclaimed a love I ne'er had known,
Vaunted a passion alien to my heart.
My soul has met with thine. Though I did wrong,
These lips are stilled. No slightest sigh is heard,
And all my poesy is prisoned in a word:—
"I love thee, Sweet." Herein lies all my song.
The Pilot-fish.
Cécile read the verses twice through, then flung herself back amongst the pillows with a burning face.
The solution was not long in coming. Apparently, the poet had previously sent verses, from time to time, to Hermione. Cécile had seen the envelopes. It was very wrong of Hermione to have received them and said nothing to her about it. Cécile would reprove her for that later on ... not just at present.
It was probable, she thought, that Applebo had seen Hermione at some time, found her attractive, and being himself of a sentimental and poetic nature, had fancied himself in love with her. Then, in their meeting of that morning he had, no doubt, been disillusioned, found Hermione a mere child and a bit of a hoyden. Later on, seeing herself, Cécile, he had been completely vanquished.
Certain parts of the verses appeared to bear this out. The theme of the poem, as a whole, was that formerly, when he really had felt nothing, he had been doing a lot of singing. Hence the verses which Hermione had from time to time received. But now that he had really fallen in love, he found himself deprived of expression.
Cécile put away the verses, rang for her maid, and proceeded to dress. At the dinner that night everybody who knew her agreed that she had never been so radiantly lovely.
"Lucky dog!" said Poole to Huntington Wood. "You'll win her before this wild-goose chase is over!"
Wood smiled, and his eyes followed Paula as she crossed the room to speak to an acquaintance.
CHAPTER IX
After the departure of his guests, Mr. Applebo returned to his yellow cabin and remained, for some minutes, sitting upon the extreme edge of his bunk, his eyes fixed upon infinity.
Like many men who spend much of their time alone, Mr. Applebo had acquired the habit of audible self-communing, this custom rendered the more spontaneous due to his practice of reciting his poetic efforts for the sake of euphony and metre. Audible self-communing was also a favourite employment of the Finn, so that any one approaching the yawl at any time of the day or night might have been surprised to hear two monologues proceeding with the tireless monotony of a pair of phonographs.
As though to relax his mind after the lofty heights of poetic utterance, Mr. Applebo's unofficial soliloquies were very apt to be curt, colloquially idiomatic, which is a high-sounding way of saying "slangy," and even at times, profane. Mr. Applebo pouring out his soul over a sonnet or madrigal, and Mr. Applebo commenting to himself on topical events, was scarcely to be recognised as the same person.
On the present occasion the subject of his monologue was the visit just received.
"That must have been Hermione with the captain. She looked like a sassy young thing. If I'd seen her face I'd never have wasted good verse on her. The old man looks like a sun-blister in red paint-work. He'll go 'pop' some day. So he's going to try to lose me out. I'll fool him. Since I've met Cécile I'd follow him over Niagara, whether I had a chart or not. Cecilia ... Cécile..." he dwelt upon the name as if loath to leave it. "Doesn't lend itself to verse like 'Hermione,' but the girl is a wonder. Harold, my son, I'm afraid you've got yours at last...."
For some minutes he remained in silent contemplation of this reluctant admission, and to look at his face one would have thought that he had just discovered himself to be infected with malignant smallpox. Presently he gave a sigh which suggested a porpoise coming up to blow.
"She is a wonder, and I am not surprised that every man who sees her goes off his chump. It is their own silly fault for presuming to raise their eyes to such a young goddess. I shall not raise my eyes to her ... but I shall raise my voice and send her a drool. And this time it will be the truth...."
One long arm went to the locker beside the bunk and drew out a writing-block of corn-coloured paper and a fountain-pen. For a few minutes Mr. Applebo scratched away industriously, then flung himself back on the bunk and read aloud and sonorously what he had just written.
"Pretty rotten ... but I have no time to monkey with it. Her proud parent has given me a dare, and honour compels that I gird myself for the fray. He is going to lead me an offshore chase, I fancy. I had better get busy and grub up. I must fake the address of this drivel or Hermione might get sore. All women but one are cats."
The note, addressed in an utterly characterless copy-plate hand, Mr. Applebo lifted up his voice in a melodious yowl, whereat the Finn came scuffling aft and stood in the cock-pit peering into the cabin like a gnome looking into a cave.
"Come down here..." Applebo spoke in Danish. The two always conversed in that tongue, when they conversed at all, which was seldom.
The Finn hooked his strong fingers over the rim of the hatch and swung down his squat body to stand before his master, cap in hand, and with an expression of dog-like devotion in his great brown eyes.
"We are going on a long voyage. Fill the water-tanks and the ice-box, and take this list to the store. Bring off the stuff with you. But first mail this letter. No drink. Dost thou understand?"
"Yes, master."
"The least sign of liquor and I leave thee on the beach and ship a clean man in thy place. Remember."
"Yes, master."
"Very well. Go!"
The Finn swung up through the hatch like a chimpanzee. Applebo sat for a moment thinking. Then he flung his great frame back on the bunk, and reaching into the book-locker, took therefrom a copy of Rostand's "Cyrano." This was his favourite of modern poems. He began to read aloud, in sonorous tones, and with careful regard to the scansion:—
"... Je t'aime, je suis fou, je n'en peux plus, c'est trop.
"Ton nom est dans mon cœur comme dans un grelot..."
Which, when one considers that the name at that moment tinkling in the heart of Applebo was the name of the wrong girl, made of his pleasure in the verses a delightful irony!
He was still half reading, half didactically reciting, when there came the splash of oars alongside and Applebo threw down the poem, arose, and shoved his tawny head up through the hatch to behold a small and frightened-looking boy in a boat. The youngster handed him a note and appeared loath to linger for the tip which the poet tossed him. Applebo tore open the envelope to find within a sheet of paper with the Shark's heading. On it were the words:—
Sailing to-night for Halifax.
CÉCILE.
* * * * * *
The middle of the following forenoon found the Shark well on her course across the wide mouth of the Bay of Fundy. The schooner was almost becalmed and smothered in a thick white fog, through which the sun was trying to burn its way.
On the starboard rail were leaning Paula and Huntington Wood, trying to look into the cottony blanket of mist. The yacht had been threading her way through a fleet of fishing-boats, and from all sides there came the faint or loud, but always muffled and elusive, dong ... dong ... dong ... dong ... of the fishermen's bells.
From the t'gallant forecastle of the Shark there blared out at half-minute intervals the honk ... honk ... of her automatic fog-horn. A few minutes before they had heard the shriek of a steamer's siren as it ripped its way through the fog. Directly it had come again, appallingly close aboard; so close, indeed, that people could be heard talking on her decks, and a gruff voice, apparently from the bridge, had rasped, "Lookout, wha'ar d'ye make that fog-horn?"
The Shark had answered the question for herself, when the same voice aboard the steamer said in a sharp tone, "Starboard! He's plumb under our baows!"
Everything was a-drip. There was scarcely breeze enough to keep steerage-way, and the knowledge of the swift tides and eddies and the treacherous southern extremity of Nova Scotia did not tend to have a soothing effect on the nerves of Captain Bell. He was standing on the weather side, just abaft the mainmast, muffled to the ears in a heavy ulster, with a deer-stalker's hat pulled down over his eyes and a very long cigar, which reminded one of a spinnaker-boom, sticking straight out from his damp, rubicund face. Altogether, he looked more like a discontented British tourist than an ex-naval officer conning his yacht through the fog. At sea, Bell always stood watch-and-watch with Heldstrom, and did his own navigating.
"This is the sort of weather that makes you more indulgent toward power!" he growled, waddling up to join Paula and Huntington. "I'll bet our bloomin' Pilot-fish wishes that he had some!"
"Do you suppose that he is out in this?" Wood asked.
"Sure. He took my challenge, so the chances are that he followed us out last night. If he'd waited until this morning, he'd have missed the tide."
"Poor little Daffodil!" said Paula. "It's no place for her out here! I hate to think of it!"
"She's all right," growled Bell. "Don't you worry about her!"
"How is the betting?" asked Wood.
Bell grinned. "The sailing-master is offering two to one that Applebo will be in Halifax harbour within four hours of ourselves. He used to bet against the Pilot-fish, but since he found out that he is a square-head, he backs him. The bosun offers even money that we get there first, and the cook has taken him on for a 'V,' but then the cook's a fool! In light airs the yawl can out-sail us, as unless there's half a gale, this tub is so slow that if it weren't for her sails they'd take her for a light-vessel. But I can out-navigate the chump, and we'll save on steering a truer course."
"Don't try to cut corners, papa," said Paula. "You might cut one off the schooner."
"No danger. I didn't serve for twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy for nothin'...." He glanced forward, then raised his voice: "Lookout, there, why don't you report that bell? What d'ye think you are ... the figger-head?"
"Bell on der poort bow, zir...!" bawled the lad.
"All right," snapped the owner. "I'm deaf already from listenin' to it. Don't try to make me any deafer. Now keep your lugs buttoned back and see if you can't hear the next one before I do!"
Bell stumped aft to look at the taffrail log, then to the companionway for a peep at the barometer.
"Glass risin'," he announced. "This stuff will blow off before noon and then we may get a bit of a breeze." He went forward, pausing at the door of the galley to watch the cook, wishing mightily that his watch was over that he might get to work on a ragoût. Paula looked at Wood and laughed.
"Papa's wishing that he were inside there, warm and messy and spoiling good food," said she. "Why don't you get a fad, Huntington?"
"Cécile intimated last night that I was rapidly doing so."
"And what is that?"
"She declined to say, but I think that it had some reference to yourself."
Paula did not immediately reply. With both elbows on the schooner's high rail she stared into the grey-green water eddying sluggishly alongside. Wood watched her, and his fine eyes kindled. Experiences of the past year had taught the young man many things about life and character, and he was beginning to be able to tell the pure from the alloyed metal. Never in his life had he known Cécile Bell to be as lovely as the night before at his dinner-party, nor had he ever found her so sweet and sympathetic. But not one flash of the old emotion had been rekindled. His eyes had been so evidently filled with Paula that in the end Cécile had grown slightly piqued and turned her attentions to Mr. Poole, whom she speedily reduced to abject slavery.
Paula was sufficiently pretty, when it came to that. Her charm was of a sweet, gentle sort, which was destined to grow with her character. She was fuller of figure than either of her sisters, with a great abundance of chestnut hair, which held deep, auburn tones. Like the other two girls her complexion was clear to transparency, and the general type was Keltic; French or Irish. In repose, Paula was as quiet as a nun, but when she became interested in conversation to the point of self-forgetfulness, the change to a vivid animation was almost startling. On these occasions the rich colour flooded her face, her words were rapid and vehement, and she gestured as freely as a Frenchwoman. Paula was a continual surprise to those who knew her but slightly.
She raised herself from the rail and let her clear, jade-coloured eyes rest thoughtfully on Wood. There was a faint tinge of colour in her cheeks, damp from the fog.
"I was wondering how long it would be before Cécile became jealous," said she.
"Cécile has no reason to be jealous," Wood replied. "I offered her all that I had and she very graciously declined it, but desired to be a sister to me. I accepted the honour with gratitude. Eh, voilà!"
Paula looked into the fog. Wood gave a little laugh.
"Of course," he went on, "it is one thing to offer to be a sister and another to consent to be a sister-in-law."
"It is one thing to offer to be a sister and another
to consent to be a sister-in-law"
"Don't speak in that flippant way, Huntington."
Wood stepped to her side and laid his hand upon her gloved one as it rested on the rail.
"My dear," he said, "I do not mean to be flippant. Of course, you know, Paula, that I was very much in love with Cécile and took it very hard when she told me that she did not care for me in the same way. I did not try to argue the matter, but started in to forget my own troubles in trying to interest myself a bit in those of other people who were much worse off. The result was most successful, although all of my friends seem to find it very amusing...."
"You mean your charity? That was splendid, Huntington...."
"The motive was originally selfish ... but I don't think that it is so now. Because I am cured."
He paused, as though thinking of how best to go on.
"What I wish to say now, Paula, is rather difficult. Perhaps I had better not try any complicated self-analysis. When Cécile refused me, I thought that my life was blasted and that I should never love again, and most of the things, I suppose, that young men usually think under these circumstances. I don't claim any originality. It has not been so. My life is not in the least blasted, and I do love again, and very, very deeply. I love you, Paula, and I want you for my wife. Will you marry me, dear?"
Paula appeared to have some difficulty with her breathing. Perhaps it was the fog, which, at any rate, had very evidently got into her eyes. She turned slowly to Wood, her face very pale, and her sweet mouth quivering. They were standing near the main rigging, and Paula steadied herself by gripping a lanyard. This may have been due to the very slight heave coming in from the sea.
"Huntington," she said, "do you think that you are quite sure?"
"There is no longer the slightest doubt, Paula."
The girl did not seem able to speak. As if seeking counsel she turned again to the sea. Wood waited, his eyes upon her face. He was impressed by the sweet purity of her profile, cut like a cameo against the white fog. There was the family likeness to her sisters in the short, straight-bridged nose with its seductive tip; a frivolity of feature corrected by the straight, pretty mouth and decisive chin. Paula's face in repose had sometimes a touch of melancholy not to be found with her sisters. There was a touch of the Madonna of the Italian painters.
"Paula," said Wood, with the tone of one who offers not a compliment but a simple fact, "you are a very beautiful woman. You will grow even more beautiful as you get older."
She turned to him with a faint smile. "I am glad that I please you, Huntington ... but..."
He stepped forward quickly and took her hand. She twisted it away, almost impatiently.
"Oh!" she cried, "if I could be sure! Cécile rejects you ... and you come to me! All of Cécile's rejected suitors come to me. First they want sympathy, then ... more! I'm sick of being consolatrice!" Paula had passed with startling abruptness from her breathless silence to an almost passionate vehemence, and as she talked she made fierce little gestures with her hands. Yet her voice was low in pitch and volume. "It is so easy for a man to fall in love with the woman who pets and pities him! Hermione has the right of it; I heard her say a few weeks ago to one of Cécile's despairing swains, 'You had better go to Paula and have your cry out. You can't weep on my shoulder; I've got troubles of my own ... and besides, this is a clean shirt-waist!'" Paula laughed, semi-hysterically.
Wood looked rather hurt, but not at all irritated.
"That's not quite fair to me, Paula," said he. "I did not try to weep on anybody's shoulder, nor am I coming to you for consolation. I don't need it. The want of it disappeared long ago. It is precisely as if I had never been in love with anybody...."
"Oh, Huntington ... are you sure...?"
"Positive."
"And you really love me?"
"I love you with all my heart, Paula. Can't you believe me? And don't you think that you could manage to care yourself just the least bit...?"
Paula threw a swift look forward. Her father, a bulky figure, half-swaddled in the fog, was rolling aft in their direction. Behind them, alas! was the ubiquitous man at the wheel.
"So you will tell me nothing?" Wood asked.
Paula turned to him quickly, caught up his ungloved hand, and squeezed it between her own so tightly that it gave him a stab of pain.
"I adore you..." she whispered, then dropped his hand and fled for the companionway.
CHAPTER X
While these agreeable events were transpiring on the deck overhead, Cécile, warm and luxurious in her bed directly underneath, had been doing some very busy thinking, and had finally, aided to some extent by the muffled but pleasant tones of Wood's voice as it came intermittently through her ventilator, arrived at her decision.
This decision was that she had better be a sensible girl and marry Huntington Wood.
By this time she had come to fully realise that the undoubted attraction which Applebo could have for her came through an appeal made neither to the heart nor to the mind. It was purely a physical attraction, and its hold was upon her material senses. Cécile was, however, very much alive in her senses. If not the slave to them, she was at least a very indulgent mistress, and the things which they brought her she valued more than the higher attributes of mind. She revelled in all five; bright pageants of colour, exquisite perfumes, whether natural or artificial, music of any sort, from a gipsy band to Bach, a terrapin or canvasback and an old Amontillado, a cold bath on a hot day or a hot bath on a cold one.
Her visit to the Daffodil had catered to these senses. Applebo was pleasing to the eye in colouring and contour; the odour of late roses perfumed the cabin of the yawl, for the poet loved flowers and always had them about when procurable; his resonant voice rang in the ears of Cécile and stirred more sympathetic chords than had ever an opera; the touch of his hand as he helped her into the gig had set her pulses pounding like old wine. As for taste, there had been certain moments when, in her vexation, she had felt a strong desire to bite him!
Cécile was no fool, and she was quick to realise that these were not precisely the emotions upon which to lay the foundations of future happiness. Moreover, Cécile was both luxurious and socially ambitious. Her husband must be a man with money and position, and she much doubted that Applebo had either. Wood possessed both, with many other desirable qualities. Cécile, though not in the least in love with him, liked and admired his personality. She found in him a great improvement over the idle and rather aimless young man whom she had rejected some months ago. His disappointment and its manly method of treatment, followed by a real, philanthropic interest in his work, had matured and sweetened him. Cécile thought it possible that in time she might grow really to care for him. Also, he would make such a creditable husband; clean-cut, good-looking, thoroughbred of type, popular with all who knew him, well-connected, and very rich. Cécile had observed a certain disposition on his part for her sister Paula, but she was too accustomed to seeing her rejected suitors turn to Paula to put much importance on the fact. She had not the slightest doubt that she could whistle Wood to heel whenever she so decided.
Cécile wanted to marry. She was twenty-four years old, a full-natured beauty with plenty of high vitality beneath her luxurious laziness, and she found herself becoming bored with her spinsterhood. She was tired of the Shark and her family as a steady diet, and she wanted the big world and a definite individual position in it. Which is to say, that she wanted the fulness of life, and she decided that, under the circumstances, Huntington Wood was about the most fitting and available person to furnish her with it.
Scarcely had Cécile arrived at this conclusion when she heard the rush of light feet on the deck above, followed by steps flying down the companionway. The next instant the door of her room was thrown unceremoniously open and Paula dashed in.
"Oh, Cécile ... Cécile...!" she cried, "Huntington has just asked me to marry him!"
Cécile raised herself in bed and stared wildly at her sister. It was a bit trying, and for the moment took her clean aback. Paula was far too excited to notice her sister's expression, which was changing from astonishment to a dismay not unmixed with resentment.
Paula's cheeks were like Jacqueminot roses and her eyes sparkled like the sun on deep green water. As was habitual when greatly moved, her speech was swift and torrential, and she gestured with quick hands, shoulders, and little nods and jerks of her head.
"He was so darling and manly; he said that when you refused him he was sure that his life was blasted and that he would never love again. Then, instead of moping or travelling, or drinking, he went to work with his charity and that healed the wound, and now he is deeply in love again ... with me this time ... and oh, Cécile, I just adore him ... and always have...."
"What?" cried Cécile, sharply.
"Yes, dear. Even when he was in love with you" ... Paula's rich colour deepened ... "because it was plain enough that you did not care for him in that way. If he had come to me at once for consolation, I would never have married him. Never, never, never! It might even have killed my love for him. But now that he has gone away and got over it and come back heart-whole ... Cécile! Why do you look at me in that odd way...?" Paula's eyes opened very wide. She stared at her sister, and slowly the colour faded from her face, leaving it white.
Cécile stared back without answering. In the course of Paula's rapid recital she had made up her mind. Wood had told her when she refused to marry him that he would love her always, nevertheless, and Cécile chose to believe him. Under these circumstances she did not think that Paula should be permitted to marry him. So she stared at her sister with a set, pale face.
"Cécile...!" cried Paula, her voice trembling so that she could scarcely speak. "Do you ... are you ... do you ... care for him ... yourself?"
Cécile's eyes filled. The colour flooded her face. She was one of those natural actresses of whom the very reflex emotions lend themselves to the rôle. Paula was clinging to the foot of her bed, watching her sister with a white, anguish-filled face.
"Do you?" she cried, despairingly.
Cécile nodded. "Yes..." she whispered, then twisted upon her side and buried her face in the pillows.