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.

For several minutes she remained in this position, during which time a choked sob and the rustle from Paula's rain-coat, followed by the gentle closing of her door, told her that her sister had gone. Cécile then raised herself, glancing instinctively in the mirror at the side of her bed. There was a hot flush on her cheeks; her hair was in disorder, and her grey eyes held a sullen look. Altogether, her appearance was not pleasing to her.

"I look like a pussy-cat!" she muttered, and slipped out of bed. Standing before the mirror, she gently massaged her face with her hands. "And I rather think I am one, too..." she added, under her breath.

She rang for the maid, who brought her tea and toast. Cécile was thoughtfully making her _petit déjeuner_ when there came a tap at her door, and Hermione, fully dressed in grey sweater and a green, homespun skirt, entered.

"What have you been saying to Paula?" demanded Hermione, abruptly. "She's in her room sobbing her heart out."

Cécile's face showed the keenest sorrow and sympathy.

"Oh, Hermione..." she began, with her mouth full of toast, and then went on to tell what had occurred. Hermione listened, with her black eyebrows drawing a straight line across her deep, violet eyes. Her vital face hardened in a manner not pleasant to see in so young a girl. Cécile, glancing at her, grew actually frightened.

"Hermione!" she protested. "Why do you look at me in that way? I did not tell Paula that she was not to have Huntington! No doubt, he is really in love with her ... and no longer cares a snap for me! But when she asked me if I cared for him, what was I to tell her?"

"The truth," said Hermione, shortly.

"But I did, did I not?"

Hermione thrust out her chin. "No," said she. "You told her a lie!"

And she turned abruptly on her heel and went on deck.

The first person whom she saw was Captain Heldstrom, he having relieved the owner, who was joyously disporting himself in the galley. Heldstrom was peering into the fog, which was thinning out on all sides. The big Norwegian's beard and moustache were beaded with the moisture, and he looked like a hero of Wagnerian opera.

"What are you looking for?" Hermione demanded.

"For der Pilot-vish. Der lookout reported a little yawl on der poort bow; den der fog closed in again. I hope it vas he."

"Why? On account of your bet?"

"No. Der bet is nodding. But ve haf a good offing, und der tide iss setting like a mill-r'race onto Cape Sable. Der glass iss dropping, und it looks like a sout'easter, und it vould not be vell to be much nearer in."

"First time I ever saw you worrying about the Pilot-fish," observed Hermione.

"That is true. Since I haf seen him in der vater, svimmin' mit you ... dere is somet'ing about that yoong man ... I do not know."

He passed his hand across his eyes, as though to clear his vision.

"Well," said Hermione; "what about him?"

"That is yoost vat I cannot tell. But his face clings in my mind like a gr'reen hand in der r'rigging." He glanced at Hermione, and something in the girl's face caught his attention and held it.

"Vat is der matter?" he asked.

This was exactly what Hermione wanted. She led him to the break of the quarter-deck, and there, out of all ear-shot, told him of the complication between Cécile, Paula, and Huntington Wood, frankly concluding with her own unmaidenly observation to Cécile. Captain Heldstrom listened, with his heavy brows knit.

"That iss goot und bad," he said, when she had finished. "I am glad und sorry. Q'varrels between sisters are very bad. But Mr. Wood is der von to settle der business. He iss in love mit Paula und he vill marry mit her, und dey vill be very, very happy. Cécile does not care for him, but perhaps she t'inks she does, und for that reason you haf done very wr'rong to say vat you did. It vas unkind und unjust und unladylike ... und you vill go down at vonce und ask her par'rdon."

"I won't...!"

"Go, Hermione...!"

And Hermione turned, without a word, to the companionway.

As she entered Cécile's room, she saw that her sister had been crying. This softened Hermione and made her apology spontaneous.

"I'm sorry, Cécile," said she. "I was angry and spoke without thinking. Will you forgive me?"

Cécile nodded, and her grey eyes filled.

"You don't really think it, Hermione?"

"No. If you say you care for Huntington, I believe you. But I do not believe that you care one hundredth part as much as Paula does. Oh, Cécile, why don't you keep out of it?"

Cécile looked thoughtfully at her sister and nodded.

"I am going to," said she. "I have been thinking it over and have come to the conclusion that I was a cat. I will tell Paula so. Don't let us talk about it; I'm awfully ashamed. What is going on above?"

"Fog and calm," said Hermione, pleased at getting off the topic. "Uncle Chris is worrying about the Pilot-fish. So am I."

Cécile knit her brows. She had honestly determined to give up Huntington Wood, and had rather consoled herself by thinking that she would at least "take it out" of the Pilot-fish. And now, here was Hermione confessing to an anxiety for this self-sufficient young man. Poor Cécile felt that she was navigating shallow and uncharted waters.

"What are _you_ worrying for, Hermione?"

"I don't like to think of Applebo out here in that little tub. We are in a silly business, _I_ think."

"No sillier than he is."

"It's undignified. Papa gives him a dare and he takes it. Suppose he were to come to grief, how would we feel?"

"I don't see that we are to blame if a silly young man in a sixty-foot yawl tries to stay with a big sea-going schooner. It's rather cheeky of him, _I_ think."

"It's a game" ... Hermione knit her brows ... "and not one that I care for. I like Applebo. Besides" ... her tint deepened a trifle ... "he's the only man I ever met to give me a thrill."

"Hermione!"

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. He fascinates me, and I like him, too. He is something between a tiger and a great boy. When he leaped on that pig of a keeper he was the tiger, tawny and fierce, and swift and strong...." Hermione's eyes kindled, and the light in them found its reflection in those of Cécile. Her breath came more quickly.

"And the boy?" she asked.

Hermione laughed, and her colour spread to the tips of her little ears.

"When he kissed me good-bye..."

"What?" cried Cécile, honestly scandalised. With all of her coquetries Cécile had always drawn her dead-line before the kissing stage.

"He kissed me good-bye out there in the water," said Hermione, smiling. "I couldn't help myself. I'm not sure that I would have done so if I could. It was a very diluted kiss and finished under water...."

"Hermione! You ought to be ashamed...!" Cécile looked as if she had just been kissed herself. "Well...?"

"It wasn't much pay ... considering the service recently rendered. To tell the truth, I was rather crazy about it. I've been kissed under the mistletoe, and under the ear, and under protest, but to be kissed under water is distinctly sensational. Another like it and I would have drowned happy...."

"Hermione! ... hush! You shameless hussy!" Cécile was laughing in spite of herself, but she was agitated also. Oddly, in spite of her disapproval, she was conscious of a sudden envy of her younger sister's unaffected naturalness. Hermione had been kissed under circumstances which she found most agreeable, and she did not mind saying so. But Cécile knew well that Hermione would put up a very pretty little fight before she would submit to the same sort of thing again. Still, as an older sister, she felt that she ought to read Hermione a little lesson. In which sophistry there was a certain element of ironic humour which Cécile, being a very feminine woman, was quite unable to appreciate.

"You surprise me, my dear," she said, sedately. "Of course, you are merely a child and, as you say, you couldn't very well help yourself. But I wish I had known that this undesired appendage of ours had collected his pay. I would have told him what I thought of it. You seem to think that it was quite right and a gentlemanly sort of performance and all that. But if a man had done that sort of thing to me..."

"Rats...!" said Hermione, and went in to console Paula.

It was two days after these unpleasant incidents that the _Shark_ sailed into Halifax harbour, arriving at about noon. Exactly four hours later the _Daffodil_ was sighted, blowing in with a damp breeze which had backed into the east and smelt of trouble.

"Get under way!" growled Bell. "Keep the scoundrel on the move...."

The _Shark_ had already left her forwarding address for Old Point Comfort, a little run of eight or nine hundred miles. She got her anchor shortly after the _Daffodil_ had dropped her own. It is probable that Applebo followed her out and hung on her heels through the night, which was sufficiently clear, for at daylight the news spread over the schooner that the yawl was on the starboard quarter, a mile astern, and as the day advanced, she hauled up abeam, about half a mile distant.

All of that day the two vessels were in sight of each other. Toward evening the breeze dropped light, and Bell was wild.

"We could leave him with a bit of wind and sea, but this sort of thing is just his weather. Wait, though. The race is not always to the swift!" Which was lucky for the _Shark_.

At midnight the wind dropped to almost a calm. Daylight showed the _Daffodil_ wallowing drowsily on the long, oily rollers, almost in the same position as of the evening before. She was under her mainsail and forestaysail only, the jib and mizzen being dropped.

Captain Bell's language would be barred by the censor.

"It's an insult!" he raved. "Shortenin' sail to keep from leavin' us! Just you wait, you peroxide blondine! I'll make you wish you were in the Adirondacks!"

As if to help him to fulfil his threat the breeze sprang up freshly from sou'west, with the promise of plenty to follow. Bell tacked inshore. The Pilot-fish stood out to sea.

"Now, what is the chump doin' that for?" Bell demanded of Heldstrom.

"He t'inks der vind vill back into der sout'-east ... und I am not sure but he vas r'right. It iss late of der season, und der vind iss a little crazy."

"It's more apt to come nor'west ... and hard, with this risin' glass!" Bell retorted.

But before the following morning the wind was southeast, thus putting the _Daffodil_ well to windward.

Bell's prophecy was true, though a trifle belated, and a hard nor'wester gave the _Shark_ the weather gauge for the finish of the run. Early one morning the old schooner pushed in sluggishly against the four-knot tide racing out between Old Point and the Rip-Raps, and came to anchor just beyond the can buoy opposite the hotel, on the far side of the swash-channel leading to Hampton. There was no sign of the _Daffodil_, and Captain Bell was anticipating a pleasant, if unhygienic, sojourn with certain whiskey-drinking, poker-playing friends from the cruisers and battleships lying in the port when, to his intense disgust, he received a letter from his lawyers, requesting an interview for the current week.

"Marblehead!" he snapped to Heldstrom. "I've got to be in Boston the end of this week or early the next."

So the _Shark_ got her anchor, scarcely wet, hoisted sails still unfurled, and slipped out with the same tide which had so stubbornly contested her entry. Saddened eyes from the men-o'-war followed her departure. An old crony, with three lovely daughters and a taste for vintage wines, is a serious loss to his friends.

"Never mind," Bell observed, philosophically, to Huntington Wood. "I never got off so easily in all my life. That gang would have got me tanked at my expense, drunk up all of my brandy, smoked all of my good cigars, cleaned me out at poker, and finished the job by telling me that if it wasn't for the nose-pole on the old _Shark_, they'd make bets on which way she was going! I know 'em! Rotters all! My only revenge is that Cécile usually leaves three or four bayin' at the moon!"

Which was not a pretty speech for a number of reasons, chief of them being that the man to whom he spoke had been left in that same lugubrious position some few months previously. But Captain Bell was possessed of his full share of shrewdness, and it was already apparent to his rheumy eye that his guest was in a fair way of being consoled.

Halfway across the mouth of the Chesapeake that same rheumy eye, which was one of the quickest aboard to pick up objects at sea, discovered a diminutive fleck on the drab wall of the sky.

"Here comes that infernal Pilot-fish!" said he. "I thought we'd lost him!"

Wood, sufficiently keen of sight, marvelled. There had been no question in Bell's voice; he was merely stating a fact. Wood's glass revealed it as a fact. Like most men who have certain talents which excel and some lacking faculty which can never be more than an object of ridicule, Bell was unconscious of the former and fought hard for recognition in the latter. In the same connection, he was a profane man, yet an authority on the Bible. At heart he was religious.

The news of the Pilot-fish brought all hands on deck more quickly than might have done an alarm of fire. The wind had got into the northeast, and Bell, scanning the weather conditions with an experienced eye, told Wood that it looked to him as if they were in for a hard "easter," and that the following morning might find the _Shark_ behind the Delaware Breakwater, there to wait until the weather improved.

The _Daffodil_ was coming up with the fresh easterly breeze, valiantly bucking the strong ebb tide. As the two vessels rapidly approached, a peculiar quiet fell upon the deck of the _Shark_. The little yawl looked very tiny and very much alone upon that broad expanse of grey water, and the knowledge that she was coming in from the sea at the end of a run of nearly a thousand miles inspired a sort of admiration.

As she drew closer aboard, they could see the ruddy-yellow head of Applebo projecting above the high coaming, and forward the dark, squat figure of the Finn standing by the mast.

"Stand by to give 'em a dip o' the ensign..." growled Bell to the quartermaster of the watch.

The courses of the two vessels would bring them abreast of one another at the distance of about half a mile. Hermione glanced at her father.

"Why don't you speak him and tell him where we're bound?" she asked.

"Not a bit of it!" snapped Bell. "Let him find out for himself at Old Point."

With everything taut and drawing, the _Daffodil_ drew abeam, and through the glass Hermione saw the Finn scramble aft and run a small packet to the peak.

"There goes his ensign in stops..." said she.

"Dip!" ordered Bell. The _Shark's_ ensign came slowly down. At the same moment Applebo broke out his at the main-peak. The _Daffodil_ held straight on her course toward Hampton Roads.

"I'll bet he hasn't had much sleep!" said Bell, grimly.

From the forecastle of the _Shark_ there came the subdued though vehement sounds of a lively altercation. Heldstrom came swinging aft, scratching his curly, grizzled head.

"Der bets is all mixed up, zir!" said he. "I don't know if I owe der cook ten dollars, or if he owes me fifteen!"