Part 15

The first officer saluted and gave orders. Several men moved smartly to carry them out. From the bridge the Captain watched the launch slide against the quay, and grinned as he imagined the utter amazement of her passengers at the sight of his vessel with her dignified nose turned seaward. A smart breeze, lively water, unclouded sun, a clear horizon,--what a picture the _Galatea_ must make from the shore, he thought.

"A contemptible trick," said Beatrix, looking at Franklin as though he were a leper. Other things came to her lips, savage, unrestrained, white-hot things,--not another living creature would have dared to treat her like this, not one,--but the first officer was in ear-shot as well as some of the crew. Blood and breeding told and so with one of her most gracious smiles she turned and swung away, singing a little song. Without a maid, without a companion, without a friend, she was a prisoner on this yacht-world, at the mercy of the man who had given her vanity an unhealing wound. Her one hope, her one most eager hope, was that she would reach the drawing-room before her tears could be seen.

Franklin watched her go. To his tremendous love was added pride and admiration. She had called him a sportsman, but what could he call her?

"A contemptible trick,--yes," he thought. "But this is my job. Fate has marked me out to make a splendid woman of this spoiled girl, and I'll do it."

*XXVII*

Mr. Jones, with half a smile playing round his elastic mouth, and an irresistible twinkle in his small, blue, nimble eyes, quickly overhauled the _Galatea_, saw the launch properly hoisted and reported to the first officer.

"Well, that was a little bit of orl-right," he said, rubbing his handkerchief round the wet leather-lining of his cap. "Neat, very neat."

"Did they say anything when they twigged the idea?"

The whole of Mr. Jones' cockney face puckered into a grin. "Yes, I don't think," he said. "The old hen cackled as if she had lost her pet chicken. A good little soul. I believe she'd 'ave took a flyin' leap back into the launch if Mr. Fraser 'adn't 'eld her."

"What about Mrs. Larpent?"

"Ma boy, the siren's langwidge under her breath would 'ave lit a pile of shavings. Oh, she's 'ot stuff, that Larpy, and no mistake. Personally, I'm bally sorry she's off. It was better than readin' a novel to watch 'er sittin' about with a social smile on one side of her face and a Board meetin' on the other. The way she was layin' bird lime for the Boss! Clever? Nor 'arf,--and, moreover, what a nice leg for a stockin', eh?"

The first officer nodded sympathetically. "Yes," he said, "you're right. What about M.F.?"

Mr. Jones mopped his forehead and ran his handkerchief round the inside of his collar. The afternoon was warm. "I only 'ad time to chuck one glance at Peter Pan," he said, giving Malcolm the nick-name by which he was known on board, "somethin' in his eyes puzzled me. I dunno, but he 'ad the look of a little feller who'd 'ad his finger caught in a door and didn't mean to say anything about it. Well, it broke the bloomin' monotony, anyway, and the boss 'as my warmest congrats. How did Goldie take it?"

The first officer rather resented this precocious but good-hearted person's love of nicknames. "Mrs. Franklin changed her mind," he said, with some stiffness, "and went along to the drawing-room singing."

"Um," said Mr. Jones, with a disbelieving sniff. "Nevertheless, she can 'ave me. I'd break my neck and die 'appy for one of them heart-twistin' smiles of hers. All the same I shall miss Frenchy, we were gettin' on fine. Well, such is life."

The two men separated, the first officer to relieve the Captain, Horatio Jones to go below for a cup of tea. Both intended to discuss the ins and outs of the affair in full detail later on. The whole ship's company was intrigued as to the odd way in which Mr. and Mrs. Franklin "went on." It was almost the one topic of conversation. For constant gossip a yacht easily rivals a suburb, an army post or a convent.

Franklin had carried a deck chair into the sun forward a little while after Beatrix had gone to the drawing-room, and he remained there reading Nicolls on "Big Game in Bechuanaland" for an hour. He concentrated grimly on that delightful Irishman's account of his hunting expeditions, but not one word of several chapters reached his brain. Beatrix, Beatrix, Beatrix,--all the words became her name, on every page he could see nothing but her face and her slim, graceful, alluring figure. Questions as to what he was to do, to say, to think, rose out of the pages. Finally he shut up the book and, with an empty pipe between his teeth, sat gazing at the line of horizon which rose and fell, and built up a dream in which he and she went hand in hand as far as he could see. He was startled and brought back to the difficult task to which, like a sort of crusader, he had bound himself, by the voice of the deck steward. "Mrs. Franklin would like you to come to tea, sir." Mrs. Franklin! By Jove, he would sacrifice everything he had in the world if only those words were true. He got up, curious and eager, and went back amidships on the starboard side. In front of a wicker table Beatrix was pouring out tea while she talked to Captain McLeod. She had changed back into appropriate clothes and looked the last word in smartness in a black straw hat with a black and white ribbon, a suit of white flannel and white shoes with black toe caps. The reason that there was no sign of redness round her eyes or of swollen lids was because she had refused to give Franklin the satisfaction of seeing these things by shedding tears. No one would ever know the strenuous fight that she had put up, alone in the drawing-room, to achieve this end.

It gave Franklin a thrill of pleasure to see her sitting there, so perfectly at home, so completely mistress of herself and the situation, and the smile of welcome that she gave him made him wonder whether he was not back in his dream.

"Captain McLeod has condescended to patronize the tea table for once, Pelham."

McLeod got up and placed a chair for Franklin. "Hardly that," he said, with her note of invitation in his pocket.

"Good for you, McLeod," said Franklin, tacitly agreeing with Beatrix that, under the circumstances, the presence of a third person made things easier.

"Lemon and one lump, isn't it?" She made it so.

Franklin was not surprised that she knew. He had proved the keenness of her observation.

"Captain McLeod, these are cheese sandwiches,--very nice."

"Thank you." The skipper was not much more a lady's man than his owner, although he had stumbled twice into matrimony, and he felt preposterously at a loss for small talk; but if, now that the guests had gone, the monotony of feeding in the mess was to be broken so pleasantly sometimes, he was glad. He had confided to the first officer days before that Mrs. Franklin was "the best-looking thing in girls that he ever wanted to see."

In the middle of her acting to play hostess to the two men who had obviously planned the trick that kept her on board and whom she hated for it, an uncomfortable glimpse of self-analysis told her that she was rather enjoying the excitement and the stimulation of her effort and that her love of adventure and new experiences was being fully gratified. "You weird person," she said to herself, "what are you made of?" And even then her brain began to work on the germ of an idea that might lead to her escape. Jones might be bribed. Her blood began to dance at the thought of it. What joy to do the double on Franklin! "I don't mean to be unkind," she said, "and of course there can't be any more bridge unless Captain McLeod can be induced to play a three-some--"

"Indeed, yes, gladly."

"But it is a relief to be without Mrs. Keene, by way of a change, and the others. You must have the gift of second sight, Pelham."

Franklin said nothing, but he caught her eye and bowed to show her more eloquently than he knew how to express it in front of the Captain that he admired her pluck.

Beatrix caught his meaning. There were one or two good points about this man. But she sailed on and talked and laughed and said several charming things to the Captain that went well home. If Jones proved loyal or cowardly perhaps McLeod might be flattered into helping her to triumph over Franklin. It was as well to make friends, at any rate.

But all the while the coast line was growing more and more faint and the water between herself and the protection of the two women wider and wider. Well, her desire to see life had led her to this almost inconceivable position, and she was certainly continuing to see it. There was some satisfaction in that.

It was only when the Captain had gone, and the deck steward had taken away the table, that silence fell. For a little while those two young people who had come together by accident remained sitting self-consciously, wondering what to say. Franklin hoped that Beatrix would re-open the question of his trick so that he could renew the old argument as to the all-round wisdom of marriage. It was the one burning subject of his thoughts. Beatrix sensed this and so determined to talk, if anything at all were said, of a hundred other things. She had no patience with his eagerness to escape from scandal at such a price. The silence remained, broken only by the unceasing throb of the engines, the swish of the sea and the song of the breeze, until finally Beatrix broke it. "Come over to the rail," she said, "and let's watch the sun go down."

Franklin followed her, everything in him blazing with love and the ache to touch.

All the west was draped with red, and the sun, conscious of having given great joy to the fading day, sank with the indescribable dignity of a beneficent monarch to his rest. Sky and water paid homage as he went and the very breeze seemed to hold its breath to watch the passing.

"Isn't it wonderful?" whispered Beatrix, touched with the beauty and magic of it.

"Yes," said Franklin.

"I often wonder how there can be skeptics in the world with such a proof as this of the great Father. Don't you?"

"Yes," he said again.

"The sun, the moon, the stars, spring, summer, the fall,--everything so regular, so honest, so gentle, so awful, so human and spiritual and divine. Why look at anything but nature for a revelation of God?"

Franklin forgot the sunset and looked at this girl of many sides and moods. She had surprised him so often that he half-expected to discover in her expression the self-consciousness of a pose. Instead he saw the wistful, humble look on her lovely face that he had seen on the faces of French peasant women who, standing in the fields in which they worked so hard for a bare living, bowed their heads at the sound of the Angelus, and once again he was back in his dream with her hand in his, standing on the threshold of a home, listening with infinite joy to the laughter of little children.

It was not until the sun had gone and the last redness in the sky had faded that he heard her sigh, and saw her shiver a little and turn away.

*XXVIII*

The met again at dinner.

The chief steward, after giving the matter very considerable thought, had taken several leaves out of the table, thus making the happy pair "more cosy-like" as he put it. Beatrix and Franklin were equally glad to find that they were not going to sit in solemn state at the opposite ends of a long and narrow board. It would have added difficulty to a position already difficult enough.

Franklin had waited outside the dining saloon until Beatrix put in an appearance. The orchestra, with quite unconscious irony, was playing the Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla from _Das Rheingold_. The stewards were in their places. With an irresistible touch of mischief and her senses alive to the grim humor of it all, Beatrix laid her hand on Franklin's arm and went into dinner as though the saloon were a stage, and the curtain had risen on a crowded auditorium. She deliberately switched her mind into a belief that she was playing the part of a girl who had been forced by her family into a marriage of convenience with a man whom she hardly knew and that the scene in which she was to take part was comedy, one with an underlying note of tragedy in it. She told herself that she was required to portray a girl of high courage and spirit who was to convey the impression of being perfectly at ease although her heart was full of fright. She did this in order to string herself up to go through an ordeal with pluck and to prevent Franklin from having the satisfaction of imagining that he was forcing her to do something that went against the grain. Not for one instant did she intend to let Franklin see how intensely she resented being compelled to remain on the yacht or permit him to feel that he was winning. As to that she had absolutely made up her mind.

Franklin was glad beyond words to fall in with her mood,--as he took it to be. Not being psychologically inclined he was unable to deduce the meaning of it. He simply told himself that she was fearless and daring and added these things to the credit list of her splendid points which was growing larger and larger. He led her to the table, placed her chair, sat opposite and looked at her over an arrangement of roses. She was in a white dress with a string of pearls round her neck,--a dress so simple and clean in its lines as to prove the hand of a master in its making. She sat with a straight back, her chin up, her golden hair shimmering. She reminded Franklin of a daffodil.

He utterly failed to find any answers to his questions as to what he was to do with her now that he had her alone, how he was to proceed to bring about the end that obsessed him, or in what way he could persuade or coerce her out of her supreme and all-controlling individualism. He was not one of those curious men who, like Micawber, the master of the silly art of self-deception, drug themselves into a belief that all is well for the sake of wandering in a temporary paradise to which they have paid no entrance fee in the way of work and service. He was fundamentally incapable of indulging in that form of mental delusion which enables children to turn the floor of a nursery into a battlefield and slothful people with the artistic temperament to wallow in the triumph of a great achievement before they have even commenced to lay the foundations of it. He had the gift of seeing straight. He could find no point in looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. He was, in a word, honest. While, therefore, he delighted in seeing Beatrix playing the role of his wife so perfectly and enjoyed her almost affectionate manner and charming smiles he remained coldly truthful to himself and the position in which they both stood and realized that he was, if anything, farther away than ever from, the fulfilment of what he had called his "job."

All through dinner Beatrix talked well and quietly about plays and books, as to which Franklin had very little to say. So with uncharacteristic tact she switched off to shooting and fishing and all was well. She liked hearing him give forth on his own subjects and was amused to find how much more he knew of the ways and habits of birds and beasts than those of women. She made up her mind to see what she could do with Mr. Jones as soon as possible.

The night was warm and windless. When Beatrix rose from the table she went on deck and sat where she could listen to the orchestra. She asked the leader to play three pieces for her,--the strange mixture of which made him smile. They were Brahms' "Minnelied," "I Love a Piano," and "Lead, Kindly Light." Franklin, believing that she had had enough of him for the time being, went off to smoke a cigar with McLeod. As soon as the little band finished playing and went to dinner Beatrix walked aft to where, about thirty feet from the stern, a heavy canvas screen ran 'thwartships from one side of the yacht to the other, shutting off the deck space allotted to the crew. In this a fiddle and a mouth organ were playing one of those heavily sentimental vaudeville songs about home and mother, and several voices were harmonizing the air rather well. The owner of the falsetto with a pronounced tremulo Beatrix imagined to be a very tall, soft-looking, fat man with a beard which grew almost up to his eyes. She was right. He was the butt of the crew until he opened his mouth to sing. Presently the music changed to an Irish reel and Beatrix saw Horatio Jones with an almost smoked cigarette in his mouth come out, as though drawn by a magnet, or the reed instrument of the Pied Piper, and with droll solemnity proceed, all alone, into an orgy of toe and heel with his back to her.

Seeing her chance Beatrix slipped nearer and stood smiling. "Very nice," she said, when the dancer wound up with a resounding double smack.

Mr. Jones was disconcerted, not in being caught in his ecstatic solo, which he was quite ready to repeat, but because he had his cap on the wrong way round and was wearing his second-best monkey jacket. Being a complete lady's man he was naturally a conceited person and nothing put him out so much as to be taken unprepared. He grinned fatuously and put his cap on correctly.

"It must have taken a long time to become so proficient," she went on, giving him a dazzling smile.

"Oh, well, y'see, mam, my mother was a pro-dancer in her young days and I caught it from 'er, I expect."

"That's very interesting. Tell me about it, Mr. Jones." She began to pace the deck.

Jones fell in step, surreptitiously mopping his neck with his handkerchief. This was the moment of his life. During other cruises he had often had pleasant chats with Franklin and his friends who found him and his cockney accent rather amusing, but he had never hoped to do more than pass the time of day with this proud girl. He was on his best Sunday behavior.

"Me father went down to the sea in ships, the same as all me family," he said, with what he believed to be a certain amount of style. "At the time he met mother he was skipper of the _Princess Mary_, carryin' passengers from London to Margit, a seaside resort on the Kent coast of the old country."

"I know it," said Beatrix, who remembered without the least pleasure its ugly pier, stiff promenade, and heterogeneous mass of trippers.

"Is that so, mam? Ah, some little old place! I give you _my_ word. Well, dad catches sight of mother sunnin' herself on deck and as he use ter say, she stopped 'is watch, which is slang fer love at first glance. Bein' skipper and all like that naturally she was a bit bucked up when he spoke and asked if she was comfortable. That began it and instead of stayin' at Margit she made the return trip the next day, 'ad a fish supper along of father at the Anchor Hotel and was spliced up before the end of the week."

"Very romantic," said Beatrix, "and what then?"

"Well," said Jones, with a little laugh, "then there was me, the first of nine, and mother give up 'er terpsichorean career, so ter speak."

"But she taught you all to dance?"

"Yes, mam, and the last time I saw the old man was at a concert in aid of the orphans of seamen at Barking Creek and me and me brothers and sisters, with mother in the middle, give an exhibition of fancy dancin' and I wish you could 'ave seen the old man's face. He died shortly after that."

"I'm sorry," said Beatrix, wondering whether he meant from the effects of that evening.

"Thank you, mam, but he 'ad the satisfaction of seein' his five sons well placed at sea and his gals doin' fine business on the 'alls as 'The Four Delantys,' and very, very 'ot stuff too, I give you _my_ word."

"How splendid. You must be very proud to belong to such a family. I'll get you to tell me some more about this romantic love match while we're out."

"Any time, mam, with pleasure," and then with great style the man, who was as good a sailor as he was a dancer, saluted. Evidently he was to be dismissed. "Well, as I said before, she can 'ave _me_," he said to himself as pleased as Punch.

"Have you to be up early in the morning?"

"Yes, mam, five o'clock. We heave to for a couple of hours for me to go ashore with the mail and pick up the papers and magazines."

Beatrix nearly jumped out of her skin. He was going ashore! Here was her chance without taking this man into her confidence or bribing him to disobey possible orders. "I'll be up at five too," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "You shall take me with you. Mr. Franklin has a birthday to-morrow and you solve the problem of how I can get something for him, as a little surprise."

"Very glad, I'm sure," said Mr. Jones.

"Good night, then. Be sure you don't go without me. I won't keep you waiting."

She was far too excited to go to sleep and lay for an hour making plans and already revelling in her triumph over Franklin. She had told the stewardess to call her at half-past four. It would be easy to telephone to the town where Brownie and Mrs. Larpent would have to spend the night and after all she would have her motor tour. She would leave the baggage on the yacht. What did it matter? Life was very good,--and her little lie about Franklin's birthday was brilliant!

She heard Franklin striding up and down the deck like a sentry. It made her feel even more like a prisoner than ever.

Only Franklin and the watching stars knew who was the real prisoner, sentenced for life to a love that set a hitherto untouched heart into a great blaze.

The morning was dull and leaden and windless, the sea as flat as the palm of a hand. Dressed and ready in good time and wearing a most amazing smile, Beatrix slipped out of her stateroom and over to the port side. Mr. Jones was waiting in the small launch, talking to one of the sailors. She was going to escape from her floating jail, yes, escape. How she would love to be able to see Franklin's face when she didn't turn up for breakfast.

And then her arm was seized in an iron grip. "No, you don't. Believe me, no."

It was Franklin, with an overcoat over his dinner jacket. He had obviously not been to bed.

She drew up and tried to bluff. "I'm only going to ring up Mrs. Keene and tell her----"

"Go back to your room!"

"But I must give her instructions as to what----"

"Go back to your room, I tell you."

She stamped her foot. This man was unendurable,--and his hand hurt her arm. "What is all this? Do you suppose that I'm going to take orders from you?"

"Jones, get off," he shouted, "and don't hold us up longer than you need."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered the dancing sailor, who wished he could have heard what had been said.

"As to taking orders from me, yes, from now onwards. Breakfast is at nine," and he gave her back her arm and turned away.

Beatrix put her hand over her mouth to gag a scream of anger. But she would make him pay for this, with the other debts. She would indeed. If Mr. Jones couldn't be worked upon again, there were the first officer and the Captain,--and they, unlike this cold-blooded bully, were men.

*XXIX*

It had been a queer day for Franklin.

Beginning with anger it gradually led him into a dozen other emotions,--a reluctant admiration for the cunning way in which Beatrix had been going to take advantage of Horatio Jones; amusement when she didn't appear for breakfast and he thought that she was sulking; loneliness when tea-time came and there was still no sign of her; finally fright, sheer, honest fright when he discovered at sun-down that she had not rung for the stewardess during the whole of the day.

He sent for the stewardess. "Why do you suppose Mrs. Franklin hasn't needed you?" he asked.

"I don't know, I'm sure, sir." The woman was evidently worried too. She fingered her apron nervously.

"When were you in her room last?"