“Well, if you haven’t got one, there’s no more to be said,” finished Satan; then to Ratcliffe, “See you ashore, maybe.”
Jude grinned kindly, and they pushed off, the boat a strake lower in the water with their loot.
The fat-faced Simmons watched them with the appearance of a man just released from mesmerism.
“That chap would talk the hat off one’s head,” said he. “I’ll have h—l to pay with Norton over that paint; most likely I’ll have to put my hand in my own pocket for it. But he’s a decent chap, that fellow, but sharp—the way he landed me with that fish for a bait!”
“He’s all there,” said Ratcliffe.
“So’s the boy,” said Simmons. “Come alongside after you’d gone, to say you were staying to breakfast with them. Told him to mind and not damage the paint. Let out like a bargee at me—and Sir William Skelton listening!”
“Where’s Sir William now, Simmons? He wasn’t in the saloon when I’d finished dressing.”
“I expect he’s in his cabin,” said Simmons.
Ratcliffe got a book and, taking his seat under the double awning sheltering the quarterdeck, tried to read. He had chosen a History of the West Indies, the same book most likely from which Skelton had “cadged” his information of the night before. The printed page was dull, however, compared to the spoken word, and he found himself wondering how it was that Skelly could have warmed him up so to all this stuff and yet be such an angular stick-in-the-mud in ordinary life. What made him such a superior person? What made him at thirty look forty, sometimes fifty, and what made him, Ratcliffe, fear Skelly sometimes, just as a schoolboy fears a master?
He guessed he was in for a wigging now for cutting breakfast and appearing like a guy before the officers, and he knew instinctively the form the wigging would take—a chilly manner and studious avoidance of the subject, that would be all—Christchurch on a wet Sunday for forty-eight hours, with the Oxford voice and the Oxford manner accentuated and thrown in.
At this moment Sir William Skelton, Bart., came on deck—a tall, thin man, clean shaved, like a serious-minded butler in a yachting suit of immaculate white drill. His breeding lay chiefly in his eyes: they were half-veiled by heavy lids. He had an open mother-of-pearl-handled penknife in his hand.
Free of the saloon hatch and not seeing Ratcliffe, he stopped dead like a pointer before game and called out “Quartermaster!”
A quartermaster came running aft.
Some raffle had been left on the scupper by the companionway, a fathom or so of old rope rejected by Tyler as not being the quality he was “wantin’.”
He ordered it to be taken forrard, then he saw Ratcliffe and nodded.
“ ’Morning,” said Skelton.
He walked to the rail and stood with his hand on it for a moment, looking at the island and the Sarah Tyler.
Jude and Satan were at work on something aft. In a minute it became apparent what they were doing. They were rigging an awning in imitation of the Dryad’s, an impudent affair made out of old canvas brown with weather and patched from wear.
It was like seeing a beggar woman raising a parasol.
Skelton sniffed; then he turned and, leaning with his back against the bulwarks, began attending to his left little fingernail with the penknife.
“Ratcliffe,” said Skelton suddenly and apparently addressing his little finger, “I wish you wouldn’t!” He spoke mildly, in a vaguely pained voice. It was as though Ratcliffe had acted in some way like a bounder; more, and, wonderfully, he actually made Ratcliffe feel as though he had acted in some way like a bounder. He was Ratcliffe’s host; that gave an extra weight to the words. The whole thing was horrible.
“Wouldn’t what?” said Ratcliffe.
Skelton had been rather hit in his proprieties by a man going off his boat in pajamas and remaining away to breakfast on board a thing like the Sarah Tyler in his pajamas; but the real cause of offense was “Pap’s” suit suddenly appearing at Sunday morning prayers. The chief steward had grinned.
Skelton, though a good sailor, an excellent shipmaster, and as brave as a man need be, was a highly nervous individual. A general service on deck for the whole crew was beyond him: he compromised by conducting a short service in the saloon. Even that was a tax on him. The entrance of Ratcliffe in that extraordinary get-up had joggled his nervous system.
“If you can’t understand, I can’t explain,” said Skelton. “If our cases had been reversed, I should have apologized. However, it doesn’t matter.”
“Look here, Skelly!” said Ratcliffe. “I’m most awfully sorry if I have jumped on your corns, and I’ll apologize as much as you want, but the fact of the matter is we don’t seem to hit it off exactly, do we? You are the best of good people, but we have different temperaments. If those other fellows had come along on the cruise, it would have mixed matters more. We want to be mixed up in a big party more, you and I, if we want to get on together.”
“I told you before we started I disliked crowds,” said Skelton, “and that only Satherthwaite and Magnus were coming. Then, when they failed, you said it didn’t matter, that we should be freer and more comfortable alone.”
“I know,” said Ratcliffe. “It was my mistake, and besides I didn’t want to put you off the cruise.”
“Oh, you would not have put me off. I should have started alone. I am dependent on no one for society.”
“I believe you would have been happier alone.”
“Perhaps,” said Skelton with tight lips.
“Well then, shove me ashore, somewhere.”
“That is talking nonsense!” said Skelton.
Ratcliffe had risen and was leaning over the rail beside the other. His eyes were fixed on the Sarah Tyler, the disreputable Sarah, and as he looked at her Jude and Satan suddenly seemed to him real live free human beings and Skelton as being not entirely alive nor, for all his wealth, free.
It was Skelton who gave the Tylers a nimbus, extra color, fascination, especially Jude. There was a lot of fascination about Jude, even without the background of Skelton.
“It’s not talking nonsense a bit,” said he, “and, if you can trundle along the rest of the cruise alone, I’ll drop you here.”
“Drop you on this island?”
“No—I’d like to go for a cruise with those chaps—I mean that chap in the mud barge over there. He asked me, any time I wanted to.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“Of course I am. It would be no end of a picnic, and I want to shove round these seas. I can get a boat back from Havana.”
Skelton felt that this was the washerwoman of Barbados over again—irresponsibility—bad form. He was, under his courteousness as a host, heartily sick of Ratcliffe and his ways and outlook. A solitary by inclination, he would not at all have objected to finishing this cruise by himself. All the same, he strongly objected to the idea just put before him.
What made him object? Was he insulted that the Dryad should be turned down in favor of the frowzy, disreputable-looking Sarah Tyler, that the companionship of the Tylerites should be preferred to his? Did some vague instinct tell him they were the better people to be with if one wanted to have a good time? Was high conventionality outraged as though, walking down Piccadilly with Ratcliffe, the latter were to seize the arm of a dustman?
Who knows? But he bitterly and strongly objected. And how and in what words did he show his objection and anger?
“Then go,