Part 13 (2/2)

They read together for some time, and at last Claudius asked her, in connection with a point which arose, whether she would like to read a German book that he thought good.

”Very much,” said she. ”By the by, I am glad you have been able to arrange to go with us. I thought your engagements were going to prevent you.”

Claudius looked at her, trying to read her thoughts, in which he failed.

He might have been satisfied, but he was not. There was a short silence, and then he closed the book over his hand and spoke.

”Countess, do you wish me to go or not?”

Margaret raised her dark eyebrows. He had never seen her do that before.

But then he had never said anything so clumsy before in his whole life, and he knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth, and his face was white in suns.h.i.+ne. She looked at him suddenly, a slight smile on her lips, and her eyes just the least contracted, as if she were going to say something sarcastic. But his face was so pitifully pale. She saw how his hand trembled. A great wave of womanly compa.s.sion welled up in her soul, and the smile faded and softened away as she said one word.

”Yes.” It came from the heart, and she could not help it if it sounded kindly.

”Then I will go,” said Claudius, hardly knowing what he said, for the blood came quickly back to his face.

”Of course you will, I could have told you that ever so long ago,”

chirped a little bullfinch in the tree overhead.

A couple of weeks or more after the events last chronicled, the steam yacht _Streak_ was two days out on the Atlantic, with a goodly party on board. There were three ladies--the Duke's sister, the Countess, and Miss Skeat, the latter looking very nautical in blue serge, which sat tightly over her, like the canvas cover sewn round a bicycle when it is sent by rail. Of men there were also three--to wit, the owner of the yacht, Mr. Barker, and Dr. Claudius.

The sea has many kinds of fish. Some swim on their sides, some swim straight, some come up to take a sniff of air, and some stay below. It is just the same with people who go to sea. Take half a dozen individuals who are all more or less used to the water, and they will behave in half a dozen different ways. One will become encrusted to the deck like a barnacle, another will sit in the cabin playing cards; a third will spend his time spinning yarns with the s.h.i.+p's company, and a fourth will rush madly up and down the deck from morning till night in the pursuit of an appet.i.te which shall leave no feat of marine digestion untried or unaccomplished. Are they not all stamped on the memory of them that go down to the sea in yachts? The little card-box and the scoring-book of the players, the deck chair and rugs of the inveterate reader, the hurried tread and irascible eye of the carnivorous pa.s.senger, and the everlasting pipe of the ocean talker, who feels time before him and the world at his feet wherein to spin yarns--has any one not seen them?

Now, the elements on board of the _Streak_ were sufficiently diverse to form a successful party, and by the time they were two days out on the long swell, with a gentle breeze just filling the trysails, and everything stowed, they had each fallen into the groove of sea life that was natural to him or to her. There were Barker and the Duke in the pretty smoking-room forward with the windows open and a pack of cards between them. Every now and then they stopped to chat a little, or the Duke would go out and look at the course, and make his rounds to see that every one was all right and n.o.body sea-sick. But Barker rarely moved, save to turn his chair and cross one leg over the other, whereby he might the more easily contemplate his little patent leather shoes and stroke his bony hands over his silk-clad ankles; for Mr. Barker considered sea-dressing, as he called it, a piece of affectation, and arrayed himself on board s.h.i.+p precisely as he did on land. The Duke, on the other hand, like most Englishmen when they get a chance, revelled in what he considered ease; that is to say, no two of his garments matched or appeared to have been made in the same century; he wore a flannel s.h.i.+rt, and was inclined to go about barefoot when the ladies were not on deck, and he adorned his ducal forehead with a red worsted cap, price one s.h.i.+lling.

Margaret, as was to be expected, was the deck member, with her curiously-wrought chair and her furs and her portable bookcase; while Miss Skeat, who looked tall and finny, and sported a labyrinthine tartan, was generally to be seen entangled in the weather-shrouds near by. As for the Duke's sister, Lady Victoria, she was plain, but healthy, and made regular circuits of the steamer, stopping every now and then to watch the green swirl of the foam by the side, and to take long draughts of salt air into her robust lungs. But of all the party there was not one on whom the change from the dry land to the leaping water produced more palpable results than on Claudius. He affected nothing nautical in dress or speech, but when the Duke saw him come on deck the first morning out, there was something about his appearance that made the yachtsman say to Barker--

”That man has been to sea, I am positive. I am glad I asked him.”

”All those Swedes are amphibious,” replied Barker; ”they take to the water like ducks. But I don't believe he has smelled salt water for a dozen years.”

”They are the best sailors, at all events,” said the Duke. ”I have lots of them among the men. Captain a Swede too. Let me introduce you.” They were standing on the bridge. ”Captain Sturleson, my friend Mr. Barker.”

And so in turn the captain was made known to every one on board; for he was an inst.i.tution with the Duke, and had sailed his Grace's yachts ever since there had been any to sail, which meant for about twenty years. To tell the truth, if it were not for those beastly logarithms, the Duke was no mean sailing-master himself, and he knew a seaman when he saw one; hence his remark about Claudius. The Doctor knew every inch of the yacht and every face in the s.h.i.+p's company by the second day, and it amused the Countess to hear his occasional s.n.a.t.c.hes of the clean-cut Northern tongue that sounded like English, but was yet so different.

Obedient to her instructions, he had provided books of all sorts for the voyage, and they began to read together, foolishly imagining that, with the whole day at their disposal, they would do as much work as when they only met for an hour or two daily to accomplish a set purpose. The result of their unbounded freedom was that conversation took the place of reading. Hitherto Margaret had confined Claudius closely to the matter in hand, some instinct warning her that such an intimacy as had existed during his daily visits could only continue on the footing of severe industry she had established from the first. But the sight of the open deck, the other people constantly moving to and fro, the proper aspect of the lady-companion, just out of earshot, and altogether the appearance of publicity which the sea-life lent to their _tete-a-tete_ hours, brought, as a necessary consequence, a certain unbending. It always seemed such an easy matter to call some third party into the conversation if it should grow too confidential. And so, insensibly, Claudius and Margaret wandered into discussions about the feelings, about love, hate, and friends.h.i.+p, and went deep into those topics which so often end in practical experiment. Claudius had lived little and thought much; Margaret had seen a great deal of the world, and being gifted with fine intuitions and tact, she had reasoned very little about what she saw, understanding, as she did, the why and wherefore of most actions by the pure light of feminine genius. The Doctor theorised, and it interested his companion to find facts she remembered suddenly brought directly under a neat generalisation; and before long she found herself trying to remember facts to fit his theories, a mode of going in double harness which is apt to lead to remarkable but fallacious results. In the intervals of theorising Claudius indulged in small experiments. But Barker and the Duke played poker.

Of course the three men saw a good deal of each other--in the early morning before the ladies came on deck, and late at night when they sat together in the smoking-room. In these daily meetings the Duke and Claudius had become better acquainted, and the latter, who was reticent, but perfectly simple, in speaking of himself, had more than once alluded to his peculiar position and to the unexpected change of fortune that had befallen him. One evening they were grouped as usual around the square table in the brightly-lighted little room that Barker and the Duke affected most. The fourfold beat of the screw crushed the water quickly and sent its peculiar vibration through the vessel as she sped along in the quiet night. The Duke was extended on a transom, and Claudius on the one opposite, while Barker tipped himself about on his chair at the end of the table. The Duke was talkative, in a disjointed, monosyllabic fas.h.i.+on.

”Yes. I know. No end of a queer sensation, lots of money. Same thing happened to me when I came of age.”

”Not exactly the same thing,” said Claudius; ”you knew you were going to have it.”

”No,” put in Barker. ”Having money and being likely to have it are about the same as far as spending it goes. Particularly in England.”

”I believe the whole thing is a fraud,” said the Duke in a tone of profound reflection. ”Never had a cent before I came of age. Seems to me I never had any since.”

”Spent it all in water-melon and fire-crackers, celebrating your twenty-first birthday, I suppose,” suggested Barker.

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