"Well," drawled Miss Thompkins, gazing first at Audrey and then at Madame Piriac. "Of all the loveliest shocks----Say, Musa----"

Behind her stood Musa. It appeared that he had been able to get away by the same train as Tommy.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE NOSTRUM

The hemisphere of heaven was drenched in moonlight, and--rare happening either on British earth or on the waters surrounding it, in mid-summer--the night was warm. In the midst of the glittering sea the yacht moved without the appearance of motion; only by leaning over the rail and watching the bubbles glide away from her could you detect her progress. There were no waves, no ripples, nothing but a scarcely perceptible swell. The gentle breeze, unnoticeable on deck, was abaft; all the sails had been lowered and stowed except the large square sail bent on a yard to the mainmast and never used except with such a wind. The _Ariadne_ had a strong flood tide under her, and her 200-h.p. twin motors were stopped. Hence there was no tremor in the ship and no odour of paraffin in the nostrils of those who chanced to wander aft of the engine-room. The deck awning had been rolled up to the centre, and at the four corners of its frame had been hung four temporary electric lights within Chinese lanterns. A radiance ascended from the saloon skylight; the windows of the deck-house blazed as usual, but the deck-house was empty; a very subdued glow indicated where the binnacle was.

And, answering these signs of existence, could be distinguished the red and green lights of steamers, the firm rays of lighthouses, and the red or white warnings of gas-buoys run by clockwork.

The figures of men and women--the women in pale gowns, the men in blue-and-white--lounged or strolled on the spotless deck which unseen hands swabbed and stoned every morning at 6 o'clock; and among these figures pa.s.sed the figure of a steward with a salver, staying them with flagons, comforting them with the finest exotic fruit. Occasionally the huge square sail gave an idle flap. "Get that lead out, 'Orace," commanded a grim voice from the wheel. A splash followed, as a man straddled himself over the starboard bow, swung a weighted line to and fro and threw it from him.

"Four." Another splash. "Four." Another splash. "Four." Another splash.

"Three-half." Another splash. "Three-half." Another splash. "Three."

Another splash. "Two-half." Another splash. "Three." Another splash.

"Five." "That'll do, 'Orace," came the voice from the wheel. Then an entranced silence.

The scene had the air of being ideal. And yet it was not. Something lacked.

That something was the owner. The owner lay indisposed in the sacred owner's cabin. And this was a pity because a dance had been planned for that night. It might have taken place without the owner, but the strains of the gramophone and especially the shuffling of feet on the deck would have disturbed him. True, he had sent up word by Doctor Cromarty that he was not to be considered. But the doctor had delivered the message without any conviction, and the unanimous decision was that the owner must, at all costs, be considered.

It was Ostend, on top of the owner's original offer to Audrey, that had brought about the suggestion of a dance. They had coasted up round Gris-Nez from Boulogne to Ostend, and had reached the harbour there barely in time to escape from the worst of a tempest that had already begun to produce in the minds of sundry pa.s.sengers a grave doubt whether yachting was, after all, the most delightful of pursuits. Some miles before the white dome of the Kursaal was sighted the process of moral decadence had set in, and pa.s.sengers were lying freely to each other, and boastfully lying, just as though somebody had been accusing them of some dreadful crime of cowardice or bad breeding instead of merely inquiring about the existence of physical symptoms over which they admittedly had no control whatever. The security of a harbour, with a railway station not fifty yards from the yacht's bowsprit, had restored them, by dint of calming secret fears, to their customary condition of righteousness and rect.i.tude.

Several days of gusty rainstorms had elapsed at Ostend, and the pa.s.sengers had had the opportunity to study the method of managing a yacht, and to visit the neighbourhood. The one was as wondrous as the other. They found letters and British and French newspapers on their plates at breakfast. And the first object they had seen on the quay, and the last object they saw there, was the identical large limousine which they had left on the quay at Boulogne. It would have taken them to Ghent but for the owner's powerful objection to their eating any meal off the yacht. Seemingly he had a great and sincere horror of local viands and particularly of local water. He was their slave; they might demand anything from him; he was the very symbol of hospitality and chivalry, but somehow they could not compa.s.s a meal away from the yacht. Similarly, he would have them leave the Kursaal not later than ten o'clock, when the evening had not veritably begun. They did not clearly understand by what means he imposed his will, but he imposed it.

The departure from Ostend was accomplished after the gla.s.s had begun to rise, but before it had finished rising, and there were apprehensions in the saloon and out of it, when the spectacle of the open sea, and the feel of it under the feet, showed that, as of old, water was still unstable. The process of moral decadence would have set in once more but for the prudence and presence of mind of Audrey, who had laid in a large stock of the specific which had been of such notable use to herself and Miss Ingate on previous occasions. Praising openly its virtues, confessing frankly her own weakness and preaching persuasively her own faith, she had distributed the nostrum, and in about a quarter of an hour had established a justifiable confidence. Mr. Gilman alone would not partake, and indeed she had hardly dared to offer the thing to so experienced a sailor. The day had favoured her. The sea grew steadily more tranquil, and after skirting the Belgian and French coasts for some little distance the _Ariadne_, under orders, had turned her nose boldly northward for the estuary of the Thames. The _Ariadne_ was now in the midst of that very complicated puzzle of deeps and shallows. The pa.s.sengers, in fact, knew that they were in the region of the North Edinburgh, but what or where the North Edinburgh was they had only the vaguest idea. The blot on the voyage had been the indisposition of Mr.

Gilman, who had taken to his berth early, and who saw n.o.body but his doctor, through whom he benignantly administered the world of the yacht.

Doctor Cromarty had a face which imparted nothing and yet implied everything. He said less and meant more than even the average pure-blooded Scotsman. It was imparted that Mr. Gilman had a chronic complaint. The implications were vast and baffling.

"We shall dance after all," said Miss Thompkins, bending with a mysterious gesture over Audrey, who reclined in a deck-chair near the companion leading to the deserted engine-room. Miss Thompkins was dressed in lacy white, with a string of many tinted beads round her slim neck. Her tawny hair was arranged in a large fluffiness, and the ensemble showed to a surprised Audrey what Miss Thompkins could accomplish when she deemed the occasion to be worthy of an effort.

"Shall we? What makes you think so, dear?" absently asked Audrey, in whom the scene had induced profound reflections upon life and the universe.

"He'll come up on deck," said Miss Thompkins, disclosing her teeth in an inscrutable smile that the moonbeams made more strange than it actually was. "Like to know how I know? Sure you'd like to know, Mrs. Simplicity?"

Her beads rattled above Audrey's insignificant upturned nose. "Isn't a yacht the queerest little self-contained state you ever visited? It's as full of party politics as Ma.s.sachusetts; and that's some. Well, I didn't use all my medicine you gave me. Didn't need it. So I've shared it with _him_. I got the empty packet with all the instructions on it, and I put two of my tablets in it, and if he hasn't swallowed them by this time my name isn't Anne Tuckett Thompkins."

"But you don't mean he's been----"

"Audrey, you're making a noise like a goose. 'Course I do."

"But how did you manage to----"

"I gave them to Mr. Price, with instructions to leave them by the--er--bedside. Mr. Price is a friend. I hope I've made that plain these days to everybody, including Mr. Gilman. Mr. Price is a good sample of what painters are liable to come to after they've found out they don't care for the smell of oil-tubes. I knew him when he always said 'Puvis' instead of 'Puvis de Chavannes.' He's cured now. If I hadn't happened to know he'd be on board I shouldn't have dared to come. He's my lifebuoy."

"But I a.s.sure you, Tommy, Mr. Gilman refused the stuff from me. He did."

"Oh! Dove! Wood-pigeon! Of course he refused it. He was bound to. Owner of a two-hundred-and-fifty-ton yacht taking a remedy for sea-sickness in public on the two-hundred-and-fifty-ton yacht! The very idea makes you shiver. But he'll take it down there. And he won't ask any questions. And he'll hide it from the doctor. And he'll pretend, and he'll expect everybody else to pretend, that he's never been within a mile of the stuff."

"Tommy, I don't believe you."

"And he's a lovely man, all the same."

"Tommy, I don't believe you."

"Yes, you do. You'd like not to, but you can't help it. I sometimes do bruise people badly in their organ of illusions-about-human-nature, but it is fun, after all, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Getting down to the facts."

Accompanied by the tattoo of her necklace, Miss Thompkins moved away in the direction of Madame Piriac, who was engaged with Musa.

"Admit I'm rather brilliant to-night," she threw over her shoulder.

The dice seem to be always loaded in favour of the Misses Thompkins of society. Less than a quarter of an hour later Doctor Cromarty, showing his head just above the level of the deck, called out:

"Price, ye can wind up that box o' yours. Mr. Gilman is coming on deck.

He's wonderful better."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

BY THE BINNACLE

The owner was at the wheel. But he had not got there at once. This singular man, who strangely enough was wearing one of his most effulgent and heterogeneous club neckties, had begun by dancing. He danced with all three ladies, one after the other; and he did not merely dance--he danced modernly, he danced the new dances to the new tunes, given off like intoxicating gas from the latest of gramophones. He knew how to hold the arm of a woman above her head, while coiling his own around it in the manner of a snake, and he knew how to make his very body a vast syncopation. The effect of his arrival was as singular as himself. Captain Wyatt, Doctor Cromarty and Mr. Price withdrew to that portion of the deck about the wheel which convention had always roped off for them with invisible ropes. The captain, by custom, messed by himself, whereas the other two had their meals in the saloon, entering and leaving quickly and saying little while at table. But apart from meals the three formed a separate clan on the yacht. The indisposition of the owner had dissolved this clan into the general population of the saloon. The recovery of the owner re-created it. Mr. Price had suddenly begun to live arduously for the gramophone alone. And when summoned by the owner to come and form half of the third couple for dancing, Doctor Cromarty had the air of arousing himself from a meditation upon medicine. Also, the pa.s.sengers themselves danced with conscientiousness, with elaborate gusto and with an earnest desire to reach a high standard. And between dances everybody went up to Mr. Gilman and said how lovely it all was. And it really was lovely.

Mr. Gilman had taken the wheel after about the sixth dance. Approaching Audrey, who owed him the next dance, he had said that the skipper had hinted something about his taking the wheel and he thought he had better oblige the old fellow, if Audrey was quite, quite sure she didn't mind, and would she come and sit by him instead--for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, because Mr. Gilman had expressly desired that his momentary defection with a lady and in obedience to duty should not bring the ball to an end.

Laughter and even giggles came from the ballroom. Males were dancing together. The power of the moon had increased. The binnacle-light, however, threw up a radiance of its own on to Mr. Gilman's lowered face, the face of a kind, a good, and a dependably expert individuality who was watching over the safety, the welfare and the highest interests of every soul on board.

"I was very sorry to be laid up to-day," Mr. Gilman began suddenly, in a very quiet voice, frowning benevolently at the black pointer on the compa.s.s. "But, of course, you know my great enemy."

"No, I don't," said Audrey gently.

"Hasn't Doc told you?"

"Doctor Cromarty? No, he doesn't tell much."

"Well," said Mr. Gilman, looking round quickly and shyly, rather in the manner of a boy, "it's liver."

Audrey seemed to read in his face, first, that Doctor Cromarty had received secret orders never to tell anybody anything, and, second, that the great enemy was not liver. And she thought: "So this is human nature! Mature men, wise men, dignified men, do descend to these paltry deceits just in order to keep up appearances, though they must know quite well that they don't deceive anyone who is worth deceiving." The remarkable fact was that she did not feel in the least shocked or disdainful. She merely decided--and found a certain queer pleasure in the decision--that human nature was a curious phenomenon, and that there must be a lot of it on earth. And she felt kindly towards Mr. Gilman.

"If you'd said gout----" she remarked. "I always understood that men generally had gout." And she consciously, with intention, employed a simple, innocent tone, knowing that it misled Mr. Gilman, and wanting it to mislead him.

"No!" he went on. "Liver. All sailors suffer from it, more or less. It's the bugbear of the sea. I have a doctor on board because, with a score or so of crew, it's really a duty to have a doctor."

"I quite see that," Audrey agreed, thinking mildly: "You only have a doctor on board because you're always worrying about your own health."