Lady Baltimore Part 39

As for Kitty, she knew that her brother was "set"; she always came back to that.

If Hortense found this Sunday morning a pa.s.sage of particularly delicate steering, she showed it in no way, unless by that heightened radiance and triumph of beauty which I had seen in her before. No; the splendor of the day, the luxuries of the Hermana, the conviviality of the Replacers--all melted the occasion down to an ease and enjoyment in which even John Mayrant, with his grave face, was not perceptible, unless, like myself, one watched him.

It was my full expectation that we should now get under way and proceed among the various historic sights of Kings Port harbor, but of this I saw no signs anywhere on board the Hermana. Abeam of the foremast her boat booms remained rigged out on port and starboard, her boats riding to painters, while her crew wore a look as generally lounging as that of her pa.s.sengers. Beverly Rodgers told me the reason: we had no pilot; the negro Waterman engaged for this excursion in the upper waters had failed of appearance, and when Charley was for looking up another, Kitty, Bohm, and Gazza had dissuaded him.

"Kitty," said Beverly, "told me she didn't care about the musty old forts and things, anyhow."

I looked at Kitty, and heard her tongue ticking away, like the little clock she was; she had her Bohm, she had her nautical costume and her Remsen cooler. These, with the lunch that would come in time, were enough for her.

"But it was such a good chance!" I exclaimed in disappointment

"Chance for what, old man?"

"To see everything--the forts, the islands--and it's beautiful, you know, all the way to the navy yard."

Beverly followed my glance to where the gay company was sitting among the cracked ice, and bottles, and cigar boxes, chattering volubly, with its back to the scenery. He gave his laisser-faire chuckle, and laid a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry 'em with forts and islands, old boy!

They know what they want. No living breed on earth knows better what it wants."

"Well, they don't get it."

"Ho, don't they?"

"The cold fear of ennui gnaws at their vitals this minute."

Shrill laughter from Kitty and Gazza served to refute my theory.

"Of course, very few know what's the matter with them," I added. "You seldom spot an organic disease at the start."

"Hm," said Beverly, lengthily. "You put a pin through some of 'em.

Hortense hasn't got the disease, though."

"Ah, she spotted it! She's taking treatment. It's likely to help her--for a time."

He looked at me. "You know something."

I nodded. He looked at Hortense, who was now seated among the noisy group with quiet John beside her. She was talking to Bohm, she had no air of any special relation to John, but there was a l.u.s.tre about her that spoke well for the treatment.

"Then it's coming off?" said Beverly.

"She has been too much for him," I answered.

Beverly misunderstood. "He doesn't look it."

"That's what I mean."

"But the fool can cut loose!"

"Oh, you and I have gone over all that! I've even gone over it with him."

Beverly looked at Hortense again. "And her fire-eater's fortune is about double what it would have been. I don't see how she's going to square herself with Charley."

"She'll wait till that's necessary. It isn't necessary to-day."

We had to drop our subject here, for the owner of the Hermana approached us with the amiable purpose, I found, of making himself civil for a while to me.

"I think you would have been interested to see the navy yard," I said to him.

"I have seen it," Charley replied, in his slightly foreign, careful voice. "It is not a navy yard. It is small politics and a big swamp. I was not interested."

"Dear me!" I cried. "But surely it's going to be very fine!"

"Another gold brick sold to Uncle Sam." Charley's words seemed always to drop out like little accurately measured coins from some minting machine. "They should not have changed from the old place if they wanted a harbor that could be used in war-time. Here they must always keep at least one dredge going out at the jetties. So the enemy blows up your dredge and you are bottled in, or bottled out. It is very simple for the enemy. And, for Kings Port, navy yards do not galvanize dead trade. It was a gold brick. You have not been on the Hermana before?"

He knew that I had not, but he wishes to show her to me; and I soon noted a difference as radical as it was diverting between this banker-yachtsman's speech when he talked of affairs on land and when he attempted to deal with nautical matters. The clear, dispa.s.sionate finality of his tone when phosphates, or railroads, or navy yards, or imperial loans were concerned, left him, and changed to something very like a recitation of trigonometry well memorized but not at all mastered; he could do that particular sum, but you mustn't stop him; and I concluded that I would rather have Charley for my captain during a panic in Wall Street than in a hurricane at sea. He, too, wore highly p.r.o.nounced sea clothes of the ornamental kind; and though they fitted him physically, they hung baggily upon his unmarine spirit; giving him the air, as it were, of a broiled quail served on oyster sh.e.l.ls. Beverly Rodgers, the consummate Beverly, was the only man of us whose clothes seemed to belong to him; he looked as if he could sail a boat.

While the cabin boy continued to rush among the guests with siphons, ice, and fresh refreshments, Charley became the Hermana's guidebook for me; and our interview gave me, I may say, entertainment unalloyed, although there lay all the while, beneath the entertainment, my sadness and concern about John. Charley was owner of the Hermana, there was no doubt of that; she had cost him (it was not long before he told me) fifty thousand dollars, and to run her it cost him a thousand a month.

Yes, he was her owner, but there it stopped, no matter with how solemn a face he inspected each part of her, or spoke of her details; he was as much a pa.s.senger on her as myself; and this was as plain on the equally solemn faces of his crew, from the sailing-master down through the two quartermasters to the five deck-hands, as was the color of the Hermana's stack, which was, of course, yellow. She was a pole-mast, schooner-rigged steam yacht, Charley accurately told me, with clipper bow and spiked bowsprit.

"About a hundred tons?" I inquired.

"Yes. A hundred feet long, beam twenty feet, and she draws twelve feet,"

said Charley; and I thought I detected the mate listening to him.

He now called my attention to the flags, and I am certain that I saw the sailing-master hide his mouth with his hand. Some of the deck-hands seemed to gather delicately nearer to us.

"Sunday, of course," I said; and I pointed to the Jack flying from a staff at the bow.

But Charley did not wish me to tell him about the flags, he wished to tell me about the flags. "I am very strict about all this," he said, his gravity and nauticality increasing with every word. "At the fore truck flies our club burgee."

I went through my part, giving a solemn, silent, intelligent a.s.sent.

"That is my private signal at the main truck. It was designed by Miss Rieppe."

As I again intelligently nodded, I saw the boatswain move an elbow into the ribs of one of the quartermasters.

"On the staff at the taffrail I have the United States yacht ensign,"

Charley continued. "That's all," he said, looking about for more flags, and (to his disappointment, I think) finding no more. For he added: "But at twelve o'c--at eight bells, the crew's meal-flag will be in the port fore rigging. While we are at lunch, my meal-flag will be in the starboard main rigging."

"It should be there all day," I was tempted to remark to him, as my wandering eye fell on the cabin boy carrying something more on a plate to Kitty. But instead of this I said: "Well, she's a beautiful boat!"

Charley shook his head. "I'm going to get rid of her."

I was surprised. "Isn't she all right?" It seemed to me that the crew behind us were very attentive now.

"There is not enough refrigerator s.p.a.ce," said Charley. One of the deck-hands whirled round instantly; but stolidity sat like adamant upon the faces of the others as Charley turned in their direction, and we continued our tour of the Hermana. Thus the little banker let me see his little soul, deep down; and there I saw that to pa.s.s for a real yachtsman--which he would never be able to do--was dearer to his pride than to bring off successfully some huge and delicate matter in the world's finance--which he could always do supremely well. "I'm just like that, too," I thought to myself; and we returned to the gay Kitty.

But Kitty, despite her gayety, had serious thoughts upon her mind.

Charley's attentions to me had met all that politeness required, and as we went aft again, his sister caused certain movements and rearrangements to happen with chairs and people. I didn't know this at once, but I knew it when I found myself somehow sitting with her and John, and saw Hortense with Charley. Hortense looked over at Kitty with a something that had in it both raised eyebrows and a shrug, though these visible signs did not occur; and, indeed, so far as anything visible went (except the look) you might have supposed that now Hortense had no thoughts for any man in the world save Charley. And John was plainly more at ease with Kitty! He began to make himself agreeable, so that once or twice she gave him a glance of surprise. There was nothing to mark him out from the others, except his paleness in the midst of their redness. Yachting clothes bring out wonderfully how much you are in the habit of eating and drinking; and an innocent stranger might have supposed that the Replacers were richly sunburned from exposure to the blazing waters of Cuba and the tropics. Kitty deemed it suitable to extol Kings Port to John. "Quaint" was the word that did most of this work for her; she found everything that, even the negroes; and when she had come to the end of it, she supposed the inside must be just as "quaint" as the outside.