“Don't be like the others, now, and talk money--money,” she said, pettishly. “Money and their love-affairs--that's the talk I have heard from men ever since I was allowed to come into the drawing-room out of the nursery!”
“But I must talk money a little, dear. I have my way to make in the world.”
“Thrifty, practical, and Yankee!” she jested. “I suppose you can't help it!”
“It isn't for myself--it's for you!” he returned, wistfully, and with a voice and demeanor he offered himself as Love's sacrifice before her--the old story of utter devotion--the ancient sacrifice.
“I have all I want,” she insisted.
“But _I_ must be able to give you what you want!”
“I warn you that I hate money-grubbers! They haven't a spark of romance in them. Boyd, you'd be like all the rest in a little while. You mustn't do it.”
“But I must have position--means before I dare to go to your father--if I ever shall be able to go to him!”
“Go to him for what?”
“To ask him--to say--to--well, when we feel that I'm in a position where we can be married--”
“Of course we shall be married some day, boy, but all that will take care of itself when the time comes. But now you are-- How old are you, Boyd?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And I am nineteen. And what has marriage to do with the love we are enjoying right now?”
“When folks are in love they want to get married.”
“Granted! But when lovers are wise they will treat romance at first as the epicure treats his glass of good wine. They will pour it slowly and hold the glass up against the light and admire its color!” In her gay mood she pinched together thumb and forefinger and lifted an imaginary glass to the sun. “Then they will sniff the bouquet. Ah-h-h, how fragrant! And after a time they will take a little sip--just a weeny little sip and hold it on the tongue for ever so long. For, when it is swallowed, what good? Oh, boy, here are you--talking first of all about marriage! Talking of the good wine of life and love as if it were a fluid simply to satisfy thirst. We are going to love, first of all! Come, I will teach you.”
He did not know what to say to her. There was a species of abandon in her gaiety. Her exotic language embarrassed one who had been used to mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tête-à-tête.
“Mr. Marston's orders are, Captain Mayo, that you turn here and go west. Do you know the usual course of the Bee line steamers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He requests you to turn in toward shore and follow that course.”
“Very well, sir.” Captain Mayo walked to the wheel. “Nor' nor'west, Billy, until I can give you the exact course.”
“Nor' nor'west!” repeated the wheelsman, throwing her hard over, and the _Olenia_ came about with a rail-dipping swerve and retraced her way along her own wake of white suds.
Miss Marston preceded the captain down the ladder and went into the chart-room. “A kiss--quick!” she whispered.
He held her close to him for a long moment.
“You are a most obedient captain,” she said.
When he released her and went at his task, she leaned upon his shoulder and watched him as he straddled his parallels across the chart.
“We'll run to Razee Reef,” he told her, eager to make her a partner in all his little concerns. “The Bee boats fetch the whistler there so as to lay off their next leg. I didn't know that Mr. Marston was interested in the Bee line.”
“I heard him talking about that line,” she said, indifferently. “Sometimes I listen when I have nothing else to do. He used a naughty word about somebody connected with that company--and it's so seldom that he allows himself to swear I listened to see what it was all about. I don't know even now. I don't understand such things. But he said if he couldn't buy 'em he'd bu'st 'em. Those were his words. Not very elegant language. But it's all I remember.”
Before he left the chart-room Mayo took a squint at the barometer. “I'm sorry he has ordered me in toward the coast,” he said. “The glass is too far below thirty to suit me. I think it means fog.”
“But it's so clear and beautiful,” she protested.
“It's always especially beautiful at sea before something bad happens,” he explained, smiling. “And there has been a big fog-bank off to s'uth'ard for two days. It's a good deal like life, dear. All lovely, and then the fog shuts in!”
“But I would be happy with you in the fog,” she assured him.
He glowed at her words and answered with his eyes.
She would have followed him back upon the bridge, but the steward intercepted her. He had waited outside the chart-room.
“Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him at cards.”
She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed the mandate.
Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business were below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.
“Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with our guests where you belong,” he commanded with the directness of attack employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his ménage.
“What do you mean, father?”
“That--exactly. I was explicit, was I not?”
“But you do not intimate that--that I have--”
“Well?” Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their sentiments before he uncovered his own.
“You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something about navigation.”
“I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that.”
“And it gets tiresome back here.”
“You selected your own company for the cruise--and there is Mr. Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time.”
“Mr. Beveridge amuses me--distinctly amuses me,” she retorted. “But there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr. Beveridge.”
“You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that gentleman,” said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly tolerant. “Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden devotion to navigation, Alma.”
“Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself.”
“I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for jokes. Of course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested, personally, in that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be interested in that brass thing where the compass is--whatever they call it.”
“But he's a gentleman!” she cried, her interest making her unwary. “His grandfather was--”
“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly, I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's grandfather was. _You_ are my daughter--and you keep off that bridge!”
The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose and hurried to her stateroom.
“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself. “Friendships can be broken by saying certain things--and I feel perfectly capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”
In the late afternoon the _Olenia_, the shore-line looming to starboard, shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.
The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it trailed over the waves--skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which marched in mass more slowly behind.
A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line. With that fog coming, Captain Mayo needed to take exact bearings from Razee, for he had decided to run for harbor that night. That coastline, to whose inside course Marston's orders had sent the yacht, was too dangerous to be negotiated in a night which was fog-wrapped. Therefore, the captain took the whistler nearly dead on, leaving to the larger steamer plenty of room in the open sea.
With considerable amazement Mayo noticed that the other fellow was edging toward the whistler at a sharper angle than any one needed. That course, if persisted in, would pinch the yacht in dangerous waters. Mayo gave the on-coming steamer one whistle, indicating his intention to pass to starboard. After a delay he was answered by two hoarse hoots--a most flagrant breach of the rules of the road.
“That must be a mistake,” Captain Mayo informed Mate McGaw.
“That's a polite name for it, sir,” averred Mr. McGaw, after he had shifted the lump in his cheek.
“Of course he doesn't mean it, Mr. McGaw.”
“Then why isn't he giving us elbow-room on the outside of that buoy, sir?”
“I can't swing and cross his bows now. If he should hit us we'd be the ones held for the accident.”
Again Mayo gave the obstinate steamer a single whistle-blast.
“If he cross-signals me again I'll report him,” he informed the mate. “Pay close attention, Mr. McGaw, and you, too, Billy. We may have to go before the inspectors.”