"Nothing else," she said, smiling up at him.
"You're shivering."
"Oh, no. I'm only--cool. That's all."
He flung open the locker. There was nothing in it but his bathing suit.
He had left a big, thick towel on the rocks to dry. He seemed to have
left everything on the rocks,--including his wits. There was nothing to
put round her.
"_Galatea,--Galatea_, ahoy."
He was an hour making up his mind what to do. During that time,
listening hard for any near signal or answering call, he shouted and
kept up a jerky conversation, talking to Beatrix as though she were a
child, trying to make her laugh with futile jokes that he would have
sworn he couldn't have remembered. Like a Trojan she played up and duly
laughed with chattering teeth and many times whipped in quickly with an
"Ahoy" herself to help him out.
Suddenly she began to whimper. She couldn't help it. She was so cold
and so frightened and to her it seemed as though this were the end of
everything.
And that decided him. He picked her up and sat down, put her in his
lap, wound his arms round her and put his cheek against her cheek. This
girl-child must have all his warmth. He was responsible for this
inefficient business. The fool engine had beat him.... She was no
longer in his blood. She was a beautiful human thing who must be kept
from crying, kept warm, kept alive. The sex in him was utterly dormant.
The desire to preserve had conquered it. He was a worried, anxious man
with a delicate lovely thing on his hands and it was his fault, curse
him, that she was whimpering and chilled and horribly uncomfortable and
up against death perhaps. At any moment they might be run down,--at a
loose end, out there among the veils. And he held all her softness
tight to him and presently began to rub her,--shoulders and arms and
legs, to make her blood circulate, to stop her from whimpering, saying
the sort of things that men always say to children who have hurt
themselves, silly, little, queer things, over and over again.
It was wonderful.... He was so strong and fine, and she cuddled up to
his big chest and put her arms about him and gave herself up, wholly,
without a qualm. With the same regularity he threw up his head and
shouted and she heard the rumble of his voice, and for a long time he
held her and rubbed, never letting her blood stop, only cutting into his
murmur of comfort by shouting:
"_Galatea,--Galatea_, ahoy."
The boat was drifting. The water gave it no more than a gentle rock.
She shut her eyes and smiled. She had retained the mind of a woman with
the body of a child. It was brilliantly clear to her that out there,
then, in that drifting boat, all among those closely hung veils of damp
web, the spirit of this man was alight, and that in his hands, that had
been so hot and eager to touch, there was now the supreme tenderness
that is without passion. It was wonderful. It was not happening. This
was not earth. He, such a man, who had kissed her foot and put his
cheek against her breast, and she, who had exulted in her power to stir
and draw on. It must be Heaven. Their clashes and outbursts were over.
They had died together and met again in spirit. She had never dreamed
of anything like this.
"_Galatea,--Galatea_, ahoy," yelled Franklin. It was the pit-pit of an
engine that came to his tired brain.
"Ahoy to you."
It was not Heaven. It was earth and they were alive and that was
Jones's voice. She cuddled closer and her heart began to thump. She
didn't want to be taken away.
"At last," said Franklin. "Steady, Jones," he called out. "We're
drifting. Slide up alongside and take us on. We're cold.... Well
played, little girl," and he kissed her on the mouth.
That night he insisted upon her having dinner in bed. Ah, how good that
steaming, hot bath had been.
Afterwards, strained and very, very tired, she fell asleep at once, and
went back to the little beach with its vague patterns of sea-weed on
yellow sand, and they swam again and dried in the sun, and talked and
laughed, and he lay at her feet, brown and clean-cut, with burning
eyes,--but when he picked her up this time and carried her to the cave
she held him tight and found his lips and lay with him on the warm
sand....
It must have been midnight when she woke suddenly and put her hand out
to touch his face.
It was not true. She was alone,--and she loved him so!
*XXXIV*
It was exactly half-past nine the following morning when Jones rapped at
the door of the Captain's stateroom. The dancing sailor registered the
note of irritation in the shout of "Come" with a comic grievance and
went in to find McLeod struggling to remove a recalcitrant beard with a
very disagreeable razor. There was, God knows, every reason for a touch
of temper mixed with that sort of amazement that a man feels when an old
and true friend goes back on him. Shaving at the best of times is a
penance, at the worst a catastrophe. The Captain was a clean-shaven man
in the middle forties and although, as one of the Esau tribe, he had
used a razor since he was eighteen; he had failed to understand the
peculiar psychology of steel and to appreciate the fact that the blade
of a razor is just as temperamental and just as much affected by the
vagaries of liver as the average human being. He made no allowances.
"What is it, Jones?"
"Sorry ter disturb you, sir, but there's a launch comin' up on the port
side with Mr. Fraser aboard. Thought you'd like ter know, sir."
"Have you told Mr. Franklin?"
"No, sir. Considered it my duty ter report it ter you, sir."
"Well, nip round to Mr. Franklin and tell him, will you? I don't see
what M.F. wants to trail us for unless it's something important."
And so Jones nipped, little knowing that Malcolm's unexpected visit was
to bring about a new crisis in the lives of Franklin and Beatrix.
Only just dressed, Franklin followed Jones out in time to see Malcolm
come aboard. "Why, hello, my dear fellow," he called out with immense
cordiality, "you're just in time for breakfast." It seemed an age since
he had seen his friend.
The sky was clear again, the sun warm and gracious, the sea just lively
enough to make the yacht dance. The fog which had come from nowhere for
no reason had gone back in the same mood. Franklin had slept in one
solid, dreamless piece. All was well with the world.
There was a whimsical smile on Malcolm's cherubic face. "I wasn't quite
sure that I should be welcome," he said, dying to know how things were
going. "The word breakfast never sounded so well to me. I'm ravenous.
Where's Beatrix?"
"Not up yet. Come to the dining saloon." He took Malcolm's arm and led
him off, delighted to see him.
"Just a second," said Malcolm. "I think you'd better tell McLeod to
turn the yacht about at once. It'll save time."