Part 12

"Yes, that was the idea. Very jolly it is too. Here's the promenade, about nine feet broad and smooth as a billiard ball. It continues across the forepart of the library and across the afterpart of the line of deck houses, see? So that there's an oblong track round most of the yacht, covered overhead with a thick awning."

"Ah! I see myself taking exercise there morning, noon and night."

"We all do," said Malcolm.

"Well, about thirty feet from the stern, here, there's a double canvas screen running thwartships from one side to the other, shutting off a good space for the use of the crew. Under the forecastle head, on the main deck, are the officers' and petty officers' quarters, very comfortable and excellent. Under the library is my sitting-room, which runs the whole breadth of the ship. This is where we usually foregather,--I mean on the bachelor cruises."

"Which are now things of the past," said Beatrix imperturbably. "Are we to be permitted to peek into this sanctum some day?"

"Of course." Franklin's heart pumped a little.

And then, rising with her peculiar feline grace, Mrs. Larpent joined the group round the table. "All these technicalities are Greek to me," she said. "I want to know how many guest rooms there are, how many bathrooms, whether the mirrors are full length, whether you bought all the rugs from the same place and if so whether you got them cheaper and, in fact, all those human details that I can understand,--poor, untechnical me!"

Franklin gave a short laugh but was obviously thrown out. His description of the _Galatea_ was in the only language that he knew. He was unable to translate it into woman's talk.

Beatrix was quick to notice his quandary. Nearly everything that he had said was altogether beyond her too and gave her no more intimate a picture of the yacht than she would have obtained from a quick glance at a blue-print, but, after all, she intended to explore in the morning, so what did it matter? Her pricking conscience had alone brought the matter up. "Never mind about the furniture," she said. "Go on from where your finger is, Pelham. I'm following you with keen intelligence and boundless interest."

Franklin gave her a grateful smile. "Well, the windows, here, abaft of my room on the port side are the cabins of the major-domo, the Captain, the head steward, the chief engineer, the purser, an officers' mess room, the ship's galley, a steward's mess room and other cabins. Over here on the starboard side are the guest rooms and suites,--twenty all told. The lower-deck is given up to stores, coal bunkers, the engine room, the stoke-hold, a stack of electric accumulators which keep the electric lights going when the engines aren't working, and the gymnasium. The engines are designed not for speed but for smooth running. We can whack up to twelve knots an hour but our average is eight. Finally we carry an ample supply of boats as well as two steam launches, one burning coal, the other oil." He bowed and laughed and said "I thank you" in imitation of the professional guide, closed the album and put it away, having thoroughly enjoyed himself.

"And this very beautiful and complete toy," thought Ida Larpent, looking after the owner of it with calculating envy and admiration, "costs as much to run per annum as would make an admirable capital for a little lonely woman. My dear, you will be throwing away the opportunity of a life-time if you don't make yourself very precious to this indecently wealthy young man."

Then they sat down to bridge.

*XX*

The third day out, the semblance of peace and contentment reigning on board, the _Galatea_ ran into bad weather. The barometer had fallen sharply during the night and the day broke behind a dull grey curtain to windward which blotted out the horizon and brought heavy rain as it came over. Capricious shifts of wind in puffy spells made the awnings rattle and the sea agitated. The Captain stuck to his course until the squall caught him, and then, in deference to the ladies, ran with the sea astern. Before four o'clock in the afternoon, however, the wind fell away and the sky cleared and the sun came out again to the immense relief of Mrs. Lester Keene, who had given way to seasickness and to thoughts of disaster and death.

The weather, like nearly everything else, had not affected Beatrix. With Mrs. Larpent and Malcolm Fraser as spectators, she spent most of the morning in the gymnasium exercising her limbs and her lungs,--the former on the bars and rings and the electrically-worked horse, the latter by frequent bursts of merry laughter and constant talking. The newness of her surroundings had not yet worn off. The sense of being the heroine of a most daring adventure was still upon her. Then too, she found her new friend, whose peculiar beauty had attracted her, entertaining and, better still, interesting, and her old one as eager to fetch and carry and as willing to pay her deference as ever. So far as Franklin was concerned he remained the man who had said an unforgivable thing and who was, by accident, her host. He counted only as such.

But that night, having laid a restraining hand upon herself, Nature, who does not appear to be happy unless she can exert her power in some way, churned up a storm on the yacht. She brought about two incidents which, both quite unnecessary, did much to make this so-called honeymoon cruise lose its outward peacefulness. It is her invariable way.

The first happened before dinner, the second after, and both were led up to by the clash of temperament. The return of the sun had something to do with the first. Its warmth and brightness sent Beatrix's spirits, already high, up to set-fair. Tea was served on deck. To Franklin's inward rage Fraser immediately became the object of Beatrix's whole attention. She called him "Mally," talked almost tenderly about the old days, drew him out on the subject of books and life and then, utterly ignoring the others, paced up and down with her arm through his, listening with the rapt wonder of a little girl while he recited his recent verses to her.

It was when he had run his not very retentive memory down that she began to talk about herself. "Mally," she said suddenly, "do you remember a dream I told you about one spring morning when we were sitting on a log at the edge of those dear old woods? You had been ill, I think, and your mother had sent for you from school to feed you up."

"I remember," said Malcolm. "You were eight or so, and I had just struck fifteen and was consumed with the idea that I was a man. I had just introduced myself to a razor. Oh, a great moment in the male career!"

"Don't talk so much, Mally dear. This is my innings. I told you that I had dreamed that father had lost all his money, every cent of it, and was broken and helpless and that mother,--how queerly right it was,--had gone to bed permanently from the shock, and then I blossomed into a Joan of Arc because the night before that funny little French governess, Mademoiselle Hannebigue, had been reading to me about her, and I went out into the world,--it was New York, of course,--to build up a new fortune for my unfortunate parents."

"What became of Miss Hannebigue, by the way?"

"That doesn't matter. Don't drag red herrings across our path. I became a great artist in about a minute and painted a picture that caused such a sensation that I sold it to a gorgeous person with a golden beard and blue eyes for oh, millions and millions of dollars. And just before some vandal woke me up,--not Hannebigue because she was in mortal terror of me,--I was carrying it all up to father in a big brown bag. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember. Why?"

Beatrix said nothing for a moment, and as Malcolm looked at her beautiful face and long fine lashes and the little wistful smile on her lips he saw the fallen log again, and the young birches just broken into leaf; the little big-eyed girl who had ordered him about and the pair of new brown shoes that he had put on that day and which hurt him very much.

"Mally, I never read about Joan of Arc now," she said. "I'm ashamed. Never again, as long as I live, shall I ever have a chance to do big things, and sometimes,--not very often,--but just for a minute when I hear a wonderful piece of music or see the sun go down as it did last night,--I wish that father had really lost all his money and I was an artist or something working for him. Oh, Mally, old thing, I'm not really much good these days and I might have been,--I really might have been. You're a poet. You get closer to the angels than ordinary mortals. What can I do? How shall I become something? Is there no way for me to justify having once been able to carry that funny old bulging bag up to father?"

It was Malcolm's turn to say nothing for a moment. From where they stood he could see Franklin's clean-cut profile as he sat with his chin on his fist looking out to sea. And the man who was his friend and whose story he knew, seemed to look awfully alone and hurt. And then he spoke, eagerly, with a great and God-sent unselfishness. "Dear girl," he said, "my dear little girl, open your heart to Pel. That's the way."

The next instant the warm young arm was pulled sharply away from his own and a scoffing laugh was carried off like a bird. "Not in this world," she cried. "Not in this world!"

And then, with a little devil on her shoulder, the same little devil that had made her do all her foolish, impulsive, inconsistent things, she went over to where Franklin was sitting and stood with one foot on the deck chair vacated by Ida Larpent, who had found it difficult to get any attention. The girl's brain was suddenly filled with an impish desire to flick her host's apparent imperturbability with the whip of sarcasm.

"Well," she said, putting a note of bonhomie into her voice that Franklin had never heard before, and liked. "Thinking,--for a change?"

He got up and stood with his back to one of the iron supports. "Why for a change?" Good Heavens, what a picture she made, standing there!

"I've always been under the impression that sportsmen never think."

Franklin laughed. What did he care what she said so that she spoke to him, and he saw the flash of her teeth, the gleam of her dimples, the play of her astounding eyes? "You mean, being a sportsman, I don't need and have not been given, the necessary machinery for thinking?"

"I wouldn't for a moment go so far as that," she said, with a curiously expressive gesture which completely contradicted her remark. "You spend most of your time on the _Galatea_, don't you?"

"Yes, as much as I can."

"I don't wonder. I'm beginning to understand that there must be something very satisfying in being the Czar of this little Kingdom,--it's really the only way to feel the full power of wealth, unless you work and control great interests and feed your vanity like that Democracies worship the monied man, I know, but there is really a touch of the old feudal system in life on a yacht like this. Officers and men, forty of them, are your slaves. It's "Yes, sir; No, sir; Come aboard, sir; I'll make it so, sir," all day long, and, unlike a mere world, the very yacht can be ordered to change her course, put in or put out, at your imperial command. Yes, I begin to feel the fascination of the life you've chosen."

She said all this thoughtfully, disguising the rank impertinence of it under a sort of naive admiration.

It puzzled Franklin. He was too simple and direct to get her point of view and not willing to believe that he was being gratuitously "cheeked." "You've got me wrong," he said. "I live on the sea because I like it and because I hate cities and society and newspapers and their gross publicity. That's all."

She knew that he was speaking the truth. She knew also that her elaborate sarcasm had missed fire. She tried again. The little devil was still on her shoulder. "Oh, I see," she said, acting astonishment. "You're like the little boy who builds a hut in the back yard and forces himself to believe that he's hundreds of thousands of miles away from home. You come to sea to dodge the responsibilities of real life. You float lazily about on the water like a sportsman and leave the earth to be run by mere men. Well, I daresay there's something in it. Hullo, there goes the first bugle. I must go and dress."

She nodded and slipped away chortling, perfectly certain that she had let Franklin see how very little she thought of him, and on the way down to her suite she flung the little devil away and paid her companion a visit with all the sympathy and tenderness of a young Madonna.

She was right. Franklin felt the cut of her whip on his conscience. Many times recently, during lonely hours, he had cursed himself as a waster of time and opportunity and wondered how much longer he was going to be content to be numbered amongst the drones. All the same he bitterly resented being flicked by this girl, herself the queen of drones, who, of all the women alive, had good reason to thank her stars for his sportsmanship. And he went below angry, dissatisfied and indignant. By jove, he would get one back for this.

His chance came after dinner. He left Malcolm in the drawing-room waiting for the bridge table to be set, heard the Victrola on deck and went out to find Beatrix all alone, dancing like the spirit of spring. Ida Larpent, seeing something in his eyes that drew her out of her chair, followed him and hid. He went up to Beatrix. "Dance with me," he said and took her rather roughly in his arms. He felt the urge of holding her as he had never felt it before. His very anger fired his passion. He would show this unbroken thoroughbred that he was a man as well as a sportsman. And so he held her tight, mad with the gleam of her shoulders and the scent of her hair, danced her breathless and, as the music stopped, imprisoned her in his arms and kissed her lips again and again.

Ida Larpent nearly screamed. The pain of her jealousy was unbearable.

Beatrix fought herself free and stood panting against the rail. And as she stood there with heaving breasts and her hand on her mouth, that unforgivable sentence which had burned itself on her vanity seemed to stand out in letters of fire on the deck house. "If you and I were the only two living people on a desert island and there was not the faintest hope of our ever being taken back to the world, I would build you a hut at the farthest end of it and treat you as a man." This assault, this attack, was all the more nauseating because of its apparent cold-bloodedness, because it was made by the man who had dared to say those words to her. For a moment, with the blood in her head, she was overcome with a desire to cry out for servants and order them to kill that man. All that was imperious in her nature craved for instant punishment. Then, looking at the blaze in Franklin's eyes and mistaking it for the beast in him, she mastered herself and turned cold.

"Just now," she said, "I called you a Czar. I was wrong. You're a polished gun-man."

Franklin laughed. He was still drunk with the taste of her lips. "Can't a man kiss his wife on their honeymoon if he feels like it?"

Beatrix put out both hands to keep him away. She was as white as moonlight and her eyes shone like stars.

Ida Larpent almost left her place to catch every word.

"Wife! Thank God you will never be able to call me that."

Franklin went nearer,--within an inch of those two sentinel hands. "I didn't begin calling you that. You chose the word, not I." The way she had of putting him in the wrong always, of making him a brute who had tricked her into this impossible position was mighty difficult to bear.

Holding her breath, amazed and delighted at her sudden and unexpected insight into this marriage business which had always puzzled her, Ida Larpent watched these two young people as a cat watches mice,--the girl standing out against the dark background of sky in all the pride of youth, her bare shoulders outlined by the moonlight; the man, tall, wiry and amazingly vital, bending slightly forward, with his hands clenched; the silence hardly broken by the regular pulse of the engines, the humming of the breeze and the soft swish of the sea.

"This is the end," said Beatrix.

"The end,--how?"

"You will put me ashore."

"Where?"

"I don't care. Anywhere."

"Why?"

"Because, I tell you, this is the end."

"You're wrong. This is the beginning."

"I don't intend to argue. I state as a fact that you will put me ashore to-morrow. Whatever happens I am not going to live this lie any longer. Now let me pass."

Franklin went closer. The two hands were against his chest. "You amuse me," he said. "It isn't for you to give orders here. I'm Czar of this Kingdom, remember. You chose to come aboard and you'll stay aboard as long as it suits me."

"You're an optimist," she said, scoffingly.

"Very likely. I'm also human and I'm on my honeymoon." He caught her by the wrists and before he could control himself, kissed her again, threw her hands away and stood back. He was afraid of what he might do next.

Beatrix suppressed a cry, and drew the back of her hand across her mouth. "Once more I'm wrong," she said. "You're not a gun-man. You're a prize-fighter. May I be allowed to go now?"

"To the devil for all I care," said Franklin.

"Thank you. I prefer the bridge table." And he watched her go, walking like a young Diana.

Ida Larpent, with the tumult of a new chance in her queer heart, dodged away.

Then Franklin turned his face to the stars. He was angry, sore,--and ashamed. But as he stood there, face to face with Nature, he said to himself, "One day I'll make that girl ache for my kisses as badly as I ache for hers to-night,--so help me God!"

*XXI*

Ida Larpent was responsible for the second incident.

With an amount of self-control that under the circumstances seemed to Franklin to be almost inconceivable, Beatrix played bridge until after midnight. She went into the drawing-room with a high head and a radiant smile and began by saying "Mally dear, you will be my partner, and we will play together until sunrise, if you like." And as every hand was dealt for the remainder of the sitting she babbled and laughed and said little witty things that set the poet chuckling and won admiration from the woman of the world. And all the while she smoked, telling Mrs. Lester Keene, when that uncompanionable-companion ventured to remonstrate, that she was no longer a debutante and if she wanted to set up a smoker's heart, well, she could. Every now and then, too, perhaps to prove the fact to Franklin that at any rate there was one man aboard who could be trusted, she leant across the table and touched Malcolm's hand. It made him very happy. He was proud to be treated like a brother.

At eleven o'clock Mrs. Keene sighed, began to arrange the magazines on the table at her elbow and said "Dear me, how very late it is," several times, and finally got up and wandered aimlessly about the room. She hadn't the courage to say frankly and honestly "Now, dear Beatrix, it's time you went to bed. You've played enough and smoked enough and you need all the sleep you can get," but in the inevitable manner of all weak people she endeavored to get her point by a series of the kind of nerve-wracking, unspoken hints which are generally rewarded by a few sharp and even unkind words. Not so from Beatrix. Noticing the worthy woman's restlessness and recognizing her intention she cried out, "Brownie, you really ought to have a nurse. Eleven o'clock and still up,--and you haven't got over that bad attack! Run along to bed, dear, and if I'm not too late I'll peep in for a word or two."

Malcolm, not unsympathetic, smiled a little to see the reluctant way in which the poor little rotund soul obeyed the command of her princess.

It was a quarter past twelve when Beatrix drew away from the table as a rubber ended. "Thank you," she said, "that sees me through. Good night, Ida, sleep well. Good night, Mally dear. For a poet you play a wonderfully sound game." And then, with an exquisite touch of shyness that took Mrs. Larpent's breath away, staggered Malcolm and nearly made Franklin jump out of his skin, she looked up at him and added, "I won't say good night to you," and went out singing a little song beneath her breath.

It was so well done, with an art so true, an inflection so full of meaning, that for an instant Mrs. Larpent asked herself if the angry and definite words which she had recently overheard had ever been said.

They left Malcolm dazed. _Was_ she, after all, married to his old friend? They were the words of a wife.

The first shock over, Franklin understood. She had let him see that he was a creature to whom she did not bid good night disguised in the soft voice and inviting manner that was intended to keep Mrs. Larpent ignorant of the true state of affairs.

"I'll go over the score in the morning," he said, "and we can settle then. Malcolm, I'm going to write a few letters to-night, so----"

"All right, old man. I'll turn in right away." He wondered if he did not look a little like the woman at whom he had smiled earlier in the evening.

"So will I," said Mrs. Larpent. "This is all very delightful. I sleep better in this gently-rocking cradle than I've ever done before. Well, good night." She divided a smile between the two men and glided away, as graceful and as silky as a panther.

Franklin let out his foot and kicked a box of matches, that had fallen on the floor, into the chest of a sleepy-eyed young steward, who was already packing up the bridge table. "I'm sorry," he said. If he had had his way at that moment, he would have kicked the earth into the limbo of forgotten things and tumbled after it over the edge.

Malcolm followed him out. He could see what was going on in the mind of the man he knew so well,--the man into whose life no woman had come to torture and disturb till then. "Old man," he said, "if I can be of any----"

Franklin wheeled 'round and put his hand on Malcolm's shoulder. "No, no, my dear chap. You can't help, not even you. Damned fools always pay for their mistakes. So long."

He had been in his room for ten minutes,--walking, walking, with his hands clenched and the fever of love boiling his blood, all alive to the fact that the girl who called herself his wife was, figuratively speaking, in reach of his hungry hand, when someone knocked softly on the door.

"Who is it?"

"I," said Ida Larpent. She shut the door softly behind her. "I want to speak to you."

It was not the first time that she had been in Franklin's own particular room, but heretofore she had seen it with daylight streaming through the portholes. It seemed to be warmer and more intimate and far more suited for her purpose at that quiet hour, lit only by one shaded reading lamp.

There was a curious confidence in her manner which puzzled even Franklin, unversed in the ways and moods of women as he was. She took it for granted that she was welcome, and deliberately looked about for the most comfortable chair in the manner of one who had the right to his room at any time.

"Where would you advise me to sit?" she asked. "I don't mean to criticise or carp when I say that this Holy of Holies of yours is more like the smoking room in a man's club than anything else. It fits your character like a glove, Pelham. But,--I need soft things and cushions, you know. Do what you can for me."

Franklin cleared a sofa of lines of fishing tackle and a double-barrelled gun and collected his only two cushions. "How will this do?" he said, showing no signs of his irritation and impatience at the sight of her.

She placed herself full stretch, worked the cushions into place with her white shoulders and heaved a little sigh of content.