Part 16

"At half-past eight, sir."

"Well?"

"Well, sir, I called Mrs. Franklin at four-thirty this morning----"

"Yes, I know."

"And I went in again as usual at half-past eight to see what I could do to help in any way and Mrs. Franklin had gone back to bed, sir."

"Go on."

"Well, sir, I hung about for a few minutes and then Mrs. Franklin half woke up and said: 'I'm tired, don't come again until I ring.'"

"You're quite sure she hasn't rung?"

"Yes, sir. I've never left my cabin,--had my meals brought there, sir, in case----"

"I see. Thank you." He opened the door for the sturdy little woman who seemed to have caught his anxiety, and then killed the longest half an hour that he remembered ever to have spent. Was Beatrix in her stateroom? Had she by any chance got away? That was absurd. How could she with officers and crew about all day? Naturally she was tired, having been up so early, but why stay in bed for so many hours? Her vitality and love of movement, her constant desire to do things and take exercise, her homogeneous nature which led her to talk to all and sundry made it impossible for her either to wake or sleep for such a long time. She must be ill! Yes, that was it. She had fainted or done one of the queer things that he had heard of women doing. The stewardess must see her at once. Why? She was no use. For one thing she stood in awe of this girl who gave such definite orders and saw that they were observed. For another she was rough and untrained and probably incompetent and like all her countrywomen sensational. She might scream or something.... For Heaven's sake what was he to do?

With all his nerves jangling like a bunch of telegraph wires in a gale he went aft. The sun had gone. It was almost dark. One star had come up, the outpost of the night. There was, he saw, no light in her suite. He stood at her door, irresolute, with the hand of fright on his heart. He was homesick for the sight of her and the sound of her voice, even if it should be cold and antagonistic, or mocking and scornful. He felt oddly and strangely young and lonely and worried, afraid of some intangible thing. Suppose she had done something----

He couldn't bear the thought. He opened her door, shut it and went in and stood in the dark. It was the sitting-room. On the table in the middle there was a reading lamp. He groped about and found it and turned it up. There was a book on the floor, open face down, its leaves all bent under. It must have been flung there. A soft, black hat was lying up against the wall. It looked hurt. And everywhere there was the subtle influence of scent.

He went across to the bedroom door, hesitated, turned the handle and went in.

By the light from the sitting-room door, he could see the bed. The blankets had been flung back and under a sheet Beatrix lay, her cheek on one hand, the other soft and flaccid, palm-up, on the cover. A great fan of golden hair covered the pillow. She was lying on her side like a child with her knees drawn up and one bare shoulder gleaming.

The eternal yearning of Nature made Franklin want to cry out at the sight of her. He stood humble, inarticulate, bewitched. The room seemed to be filled with the sound of sweet, far-away voices.

He went forward and bent over her, listening to her breathing. It was agony to be so near and so far away. After a moment she laughed softly and stirred like a waking flower and drew up her hand and moved it lazily as if trying to catch the figure of sleep that was turning to go.

He drew back quickly, panting.

"Is that you, Brownie dear? Oh-ho, I've had such a lovely rest. I've been lying all among buttercups and clover far, far away from the sea. It's good to be on land again and hear the birds sing and watch the grasses nod." She turned over and stretched and gave a long sigh and opened her eyes. Then she looked about astonished and sat up quickly, startled.

"Who's there?" Her voice was sharp and frightened.

"Me," said Franklin.

"You!" She put her hands over her breasts.

"I'm sorry. I thought you were ill." How tame it sounded!

"Ill? Why?"

"It's late and you haven't rung for the stewardess all day. I wondered if anything was the matter. So I came in. That's all. Can I do anything for you?"

"Only--go," she said.

And so he turned and went out and strode forward and stood hatless under the sky. Other stars had come. The line of horizon had become merged into the darkness. The breeze left the taste of salt on his parched lips. The eternal yearning grew in the silence and the call of Nature seemed to echo through the world. Everything that was true and clean and honest in him answered to it. All his dreams as a boy and a youth, vague, unremembered; all the sudden, surprising elations that had swept over him at the sight, perhaps, of a priceless view of open country, the misty interior of an old Cathedral, the appeal of a throbbing melody, took shape and became the lovely body of that sleeping girl. He had never understood so definitely, so conclusively, so permanently, that in Beatrix was the epitome of all his hopes.

She dined in her own room that night and had breakfast sent to her in the morning. Franklin hung about near her stateroom in the hope of seeing her. He could hear her singing as he passed and talking to the little Irish woman, but at twelve o'clock there was still no sign of her on deck. He was just going along to the Captain's room in order to talk and be talked to when the stewardess came and gave him a note. He took it and blushed like a school-boy and carried it down to his own room.

It had no conventional beginning. It plunged straight to the point. "I'm not sulking, which would be human enough, or suffering from shock, which would be reasonable under the circumstances. I'm thinking and weighing things up. I've told the stewardess that I've got neuralgia so that the people of your small kingdom may not run away with the notion that their rulers have had a wordy argument. I may inflict myself upon you for lunch if by that time I have found the way out of my mental maze. If not, you may be alone in all your glory for days,--weeks perhaps."

It ended as abruptly as it began.

Days,--weeks perhaps!

*XXX*

Having written the note, Beatrix proceeded to dress for lunch.

It was altogether a new thing to be without a maid and a companion. Never once in all her life, not even at school, had she been permitted to raise a finger for herself. Helene and Mrs. Lester Keene would have stood aghast and imagined that the end of the world was at hand if they could have seen her that morning doing her hair, putting on her shoes and choosing a frock. She did these things without assistance from the stewardess, who stood by impotent and uneasy, because she enjoyed the experience as a deviation from the regular routine of her life and found plenty to laugh at in her ridiculous inexpertness. It was a game and after her orgy of sleep she felt so electrically fit and vital as to be ready to play at anything, especially if it was new.

It was true that she had been thinking. Sitting like a tailor on her bed, with her hair in a flood about her shoulders, she had gone over the last two incidents of this queer honeymoon trip with great care. She was astonished, and even a little uneasy, to find that she was beginning to look at the whole business from a new angle. She discovered, after an honest examination, that the mere romantic side of this kidnapping expedition, as she called it, no longer interested her, nor its unconventionality, either, although she chuckled to think of the mistaken complacency of her family in aiding and abetting Franklin to commit a breach that was without a parallel in the history of American society: It was enough to make a cat laugh. What it seemed to her to lack was the element of personal danger which had made the episode in her bedroom a very real fright. There was, it seemed to her, no red blood in the business, no flare of sex. Franklin was either the most cold-blooded man imaginable or a past master of the art of hiding his feelings.

This was what she wanted to find out. Her thinking led her up to the fact that her interest and curiosity were centered on this one point. She was perfectly frank in acknowledging to herself that her vanity was piqued. All other men, except Malcolm, who, after all, was not so much a man as a poet, had made it plain that they were men. Her femininity had triumphed. But with Franklin it was different. Was it possible that the more he was with her the less he was attracted? Here was something on which to concentrate and use her wits.

It was, therefore, with the excitement of having found something to do, a new game to play at, a new chapter to begin, that she dressed for lunch. The muddle in which she left her stateroom,--skirts that she had looked at, considered and discarded, stockings and shoes all over the floor, shirts and ties all chaotic in the drawers,--was a sight to see.

Only a few minutes late, she swung into the dining-saloon, fresh and sweet, dancing-eyed and vital, ready to seize the first chance of putting Franklin to a new test.

He had none of the look of a man who had been up all night, tortured by a desire that had kept him pacing the hours away beneath a supremely indifferent moon. He had just come in from a swim. His body, having been exercised, was grateful and in fine fettle. His skin was burned a deeper brown. He was as hard as nails. He had not expected to see her, but from force of habit had waited in case she should come.

"Good morning," she said, cheerily.

"Good morning." He was cheery, too.

"You've waited for me, I see."

"Of course. I hoped you'd come."

"You say that as if you meant it."

"I do mean it."

"So bored that you can even put up with me?"

"I'm never bored at sea."

Her laugh rang out. "I gave you a perfect chance to say something nice," she said.

"I'm not much of a hand at saying nice things."

"I notice that."

Franklin let the challenge go. He had never felt it more necessary to keep a gag in his mouth. The things that were on the tip of his tongue to say were too primeval to put into words.

"Have you missed me?"

"We've all missed you."

"I asked if _you'd_ missed me?"

"Yes."

"All right, my friend," she thought, "wait a bit."

She gave a nod and a smile to the stewards and ate with such excellent appetite that their efforts were well rewarded. The sun was cheerful, the saloon was cheerful, the stewards quick and willing, and Franklin,--yes, Franklin was certainly a very good-looking person. Bother the yacht, and her people and what had happened to Brownie, and the loss of a maid! Life was full of fun.

"The other day you said something about a fishing trip."

"Yes, I know."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, I'd arranged with McLeod to go off on the big launch for three days but----"

"But what?"

"It's not much fun going alone."

Here was her first chance. "Take _me_," she cried, leaning forward. "I'd love to go. I've never fished, but you could teach me."

Franklin looked at her sharply to see if she were joking. But her expression was that of a child eager for adventure. "But the launch has no cabin," he said, "and we sleep under a hood hauled over her."

This was wonderful,--a test, indeed. She pressed the point eagerly. "Why not? I don't mind roughing it. I don't mind anything if it has compensations. Come out and talk it over."

Franklin followed her. She was leaning against the rail with the breeze in her hair and the sunlight on her shoulders. What if he fell in with her impetuous wish? Jones and one of the crew would sleep, as usual, up in the peak and he and she must lie almost side by side under the awning in the stern.

"Please don't make difficulties," she said. "Let me have my own way just for once."

He could have yelled with laughter. Confound it, the girl was having her own way all the time, except in unessential things.

"There are various degrees of roughing it," he said, cursing his conscience.

"Yes, but if I don't mind,--if I want to?"

"Have a look at the launch, and then think."

"I'm tired of thinking. Arrange it,--please arrange it." She didn't want in the least to go, and she knew better than he did how absurd the idea was. But here was a chance to force him out of inarticulation, to see his self-composure crumble and break.

"Three days out. Hardly room to swing a cat. Two men with us----"

Beatrix gave an impatient sigh. "I wish to heaven I wasn't a girl," she said, and waited expectantly.

It was no good. Franklin's hot words were choked back. He didn't know the Eden game that she was playing and would be hanged before he would give himself away to be laughed at.

And so the moment passed.

She walked up and down with him for an hour, laughing and talking. He was amazed to find that she was more friendly and charming than ever before and that her sleep seemed to have removed from her mind all trace of resentment. "Let's talk young stuff," she said. "What we believe in, what we think we might do to solve all the problems of the world and all that, shall we? It's awfully good to get on a high horse every now and then and sweep away institutions with a phrase, knock down old laws with a well-aimed verb, and topple big men out of their places with the tip of a toe."

And they did so in the old-new way of youth, saying things earnestly, with the air of prophets, that had been labelled unpractical before they were born; letting their tongues run away with them as far as they could before they limped and halted; listening to each other with their eyes while getting the next outburst ready in their brains. And after awhile, as usual, they steered into personalities, likes and dislikes and mutual friends.

"And what do you think of Ida Larpent?" Beatrix asked suddenly.

"Very attractive, but----"

"But better as somebody else's dinner partner?"

"Oh, no," said Franklin. "She made the average dinner bearable. She's in a class of her own,--beautiful, well-travelled, tremendously all there, and awfully good fun to take about."

"Take about?" Her eyebrows went up. "Did you take her about? But perhaps that's rather an indiscreet question?"

"Not a bit. When I was in town some months ago, bored stiff,--all my pals being away,--she was a real good sort and we did the rounds,--everything except the Opera--which seemed to be having an orgy of Wagner, and I can't stand that over-exuberant German. I did a cycle of him once in London and it seemed to me that if he'd had the sense and honesty to scrap sixty per cent of his stuff there would have been enough over for two very decent operas. What do you think?"

She said something to keep the ball going but nothing of what she thought. So he could own to having been so attracted by Ida Larpent as to take her about night after night, but when it came to her, Beatrix, he could remain perfectly normal.

And again she thought: "All right, my friend, wait a bit." If she couldn't compete with Ida Larpent--good Lord!

But no, even under the rankle of this new thing, and even though she went to dinner that night in a mood as daring and devil-may-care as her dress and stood looking out at the star-bespattered sky for a long time with her arm through his, he remained brotherly. In fact, and in not seeing it her observation was uncharacteristically out of form,--her new delightful treatment of him made him very happy and contented. She was so charming and natural and breezy. She never once laughed at him or held him up to ridicule. He could almost persuade himself that they were really on a honeymoon, except when a whiff of scent bewildered his senses or the gleam of her whiteness made his heart tumble.

And so it went on for several apparently uneventful days,--days full of sun and health and simple confidences, of wide, gorgeous views of sea and sky, of all the exquisite coloring of sunrise and sunset, and of the sweet singing of far-away voices. It was to bed that she took her growing pique; in the quiet of her own room that she asked herself, like the spoiled child that she was, what was the matter with this man. Under normal conditions, if they had been, perhaps, members of a house-party, she would have liked him extremely. He had greatly improved on acquaintance. He was something more than a sportsman. He had imagination, idealism, extraordinary simplicity and even a touch,--odd as she found it in his type,--of spirituality. It came out in his deep appreciation of Nature and love of melody. Why didn't he find her attractive,--even as attractive as Ida Larpent?

Only the nights were permitted by Franklin to see the strength of his desire, the torture of his passion; and these he killed and wore away by pacing interminably up and down, throwing himself on his bed finally tired out mentally and physically.

Very soon the game lost its novelty. Getting nothing to appease her vanity Beatrix gave it up. Once more the monotony of the sea bored her, the sensation of being tied by the leg got on her nerves. Franklin said a rather impatient thing one morning in reply to a sarcastic remark of hers and before she could stop herself and remember to stick to her pose of complete indifference she put her hand imploringly on his arm and burst into an intense and genuine appeal. "Well, let's end it," she begged. "Nothing can come of all this, nothing at all. You're only dodging the issue, really you are. Don't let's play the fool any longer. The more you try to force me to agree to your plan the harder I shall fight. Don't you know me yet? I'm built like that. I can't help it. Oh, do be sane about it and come down to facts. We shall both grow old and grey on this prison ship because I'll never give in, never. It isn't that I don't think you're right. You are. I'll concede that. We ought to marry and settle the whole trouble. It's the easiest way. But I've said I won't, and I won't. I tell you I won't. I know I'm a fool. I know I'm pig-headed. I know I deserve to be made to pay. But you can't alter me now. It's too late. So let me off and I'll take my punishment and the whole thing will blow over. People's memories are short and every day, every hour other scandals come up, are talked about and forgotten. Pelham, will you please be good and let me go?"

All this came with a rush. Her voice was soft and winning, her eyes full of tears, her hand warm and sweet upon his arm. But every word that she said, every look that she gave him, every touch of appeal that came into her voice made her more and more valuable as the prize of his life, and the sight of her tears, especially the sight of her tears, steeled him to stick to his job to the very end. All her spoiling, all the falsity of her training, all the grotesque power of the wealth with which she had always been surrounded, had not completely changed her from the little girl whom Malcolm had painted in his never-to-be-forgotten picture, and of whom he had himself seen glimpses.

"No," he said. "I'm as pig-headed as you are. I don't care if we do grow old and grey on this yacht. You've got to marry me."

Beatrix drew back. She was cold and angry and bitterly annoyed with herself for having asked once more for mercy. "All right," she said. "Then the fight goes on, and I give you warning that I shall use any weapons, fair or unfair, that I can find."

Before she could turn away and hide the marks of her tears, Captain McLeod came up. She smiled and gave him a cheery word. It was admirably and characteristically well done.

"McLeod," said Franklin quietly. "Tell Jones to get the big launch fixed up right away. He's to come with me on the fishing trip."

Beatrix left them to talk over the arrangements. What did she care where he went? He could go to the devil if he liked. She whistled as she moved away but her eyes were black with rage. This man who had the temerity, the impudence not only to stand up to her but to set himself to bend her to his will should see now of what sort of stuff she was made. Up to that very moment, in the face of everything that he had done, she had not cared to believe that this struggle of wills, this clash of temperaments, was worth taking with real seriousness. She had dodged it, laid it aside, treated it as half a joke, believed that if she really exerted herself it could be brought to a quick and definite end. She had not taken the trouble to rouse herself fully and set her wits at work to get away from the yacht. The pleasure of playing with fire was too great. She really had wished to see how far Franklin would go. But now, having humbled herself again and been turned down, she went round another mental corner. Her interest and curiosity in the affair had come suddenly to an end. What did it matter in what way her family would presently revenge themselves? _This_,--this business,--was insufferable. To be dictated to, coerced, compelled, driven,--good Heavens, it was not to be endured. From that moment she would set herself to outwit him, humiliate him and laugh in his face. The work that she had begun with Mr. Jones in a half-hearted way would now, of course, count for nothing. He was going with Franklin. But there remained Captain McLeod and the first officer, and she would have three days. Revolutions had been brought about in less time than that, and she had smiled other men, including Franklin, into her service.

She went to the glass in her stateroom and rubbed away the marks of her tears with impatience and scorn. Then she stood back so that she could see the full length of her figure and took stock, measured herself up, made a cool and keen examination. Finally, having turned this way and that, she nodded at her reflection with approval. "Fair or unfair,--we'll see," she said. "There are the Captain and the first officer."

And then, smiling again and happy in having come at last to a conclusion, she changed into gym kit and in five minutes was perched up on the wooden horse, riding hell for leather.

*XXXI*

There, half an hour later, Franklin found her.

The horse was motionless. She was sitting side saddle with one slim leg crossed over the other, her arms folded over her young breasts. She was in deep thought but there was a little smile of excitement round her mouth which, if Franklin had known it as well as Brownie did, would have put him instantly on his guard. Things happened when Beatrix smiled like that.

The port-holes were open and several round patches of sunlight made pools upon the floor. One had fastened upon the blue silk bathrobe which Beatrix had thrown off. The sea was as smooth as the waters of a lake and but for the busy song of the engines the yacht might have been lying against a quay.

Franklin pulled up at the door. He had come up quietly and unnoticed. He held his breath and stood looking, with a curious mixture of homage and ire, at this mere kid, as she seemed to him to be, this girl-child perched up on that toy horse like a fairy on a toadstool, lost in a day-dream. He asked himself, in amazement, what magic there was all about her that had swung him out of his course, put a new beat into his heart, that could turn him hot and cold, churn him into a desire that was at times almost beyond human endurance,--which had put a reason and a meaning into life that startled and surprised, laid enchantment upon him, made him wretched and angry and eager, feel like a king and a clown in quick succession.