Applebo looked at her and nodded.
"My _father!_" he said.
His hand was lying on the yawl's low rail. Hermione reached up and
touched it with her own. It was a quick, impulsive little gesture,
friendly and sympathetic.
"Would you like to have me tell him?" she asked. "Because if so, I
will."
Applebo's strong hand turned, caught hers in his firm grip, and
carried it to his lips.
"That would be the act of a real friend!" he cried. "Will you?"
"Of course I will. In fact, I think that Uncle Chris would rather
learn it from me than from anybody in the world."
"I'm sure he would! Tell him then, Hermione."
"When?"
"Choose the time as seems best to you. I will go away as soon as the
weather clears. Write me to the New York Yacht Club. And you are
sure that it's not asking too much?"
"No. You see, it is for Uncle Chris as much as for you. More,
perhaps, for he is getting on in years and must feel his lack of the
ties of blood. Now I must go. Hear that patient bell! It reminds
me of Uncle Chris ... steady and constant and so dependable!"
She glanced up at him with her vivid smile. Applebo's face was
transfigured ... as Hermione thought, at the prospect of finding a
father. It is more probable that his radiant expression was at
finding something else. At any rate, all of the sleepy, baffling
expression was absent; might never have been there. The amber eyes
were wide and alert; clear, steady, looking into hers with a rich
golden light in their depths which set Hermione's pulse a-tingle. In
fact, Hermione was unconsciously aware of some peculiar rich, warm
glow all about the poet, and, like a brilliant green moth, she found
great difficulty in leaving it for the chill, surrounding gloom. But
the patient bell was calling steadily, so she said, with regret:
"I should like to talk with you some more about all of this, but I
don't want to worry ... your father." She smiled; then, a sudden
idea striking her, she added:
"Why not get in my skiff and I will row past the schooner and sing
out to say that I am all right, but not quite ready to go aboard.
Then we can have a few minutes more ... to discuss the matter."
"Very well," said Applebo, and stepped down into the skiff, placing
the dory-compass under the sternsheets.
"We don't need that," said he.
"How about finding the yawl again?"
"We can find her. That is one of my few natural gifts."
Hermione picked up her oars and began to pull in the direction of the
bell. Applebo, lounging in the stern, watched her long, vigorous
strokes. Her green tam was frosted with the mist; the thick black
hair had also a silver rime, but cheeks and lips and sapphire eyes
defied the sad grey of the humid world through which they drifted
like alien spirits, seeking their own place.
Hermione, looking at Applebo as she pulled along, found him very
pleasing to her eyes. He, too, wore the badge of the warm,
comforting earth which claimed them both, however much they might
adapt themselves to the sea. The colourless gloom, filtering out
above all of the reds and yellows from the generous sun-rays, those
in which the poet was so rich, glowed like autumn leaves of a
November day. His hair shone like a marigold and his skin was of the
luscious tint of a russet orange. Also, there was a radiance of
expression which Hermione ascribed to filial devotion, long
suppressed. No doubt some of it was.
The steady ringing of the _Shark's_ bell grew louder. Suddenly
Applebo raised his hand. His trained eye had caught the straight,
slim column of a mast rising into the thinner atmosphere aloft.
Hermione caught the water with her oars and shoved vigorously astern.
The way of the skiff fully checked, she rested on her oars.
"_Shark_ ahoy...!" she hailed.
"Hello!" came the voice of Heldstrom. "So dere you are!" There was
a note of great relief in the heavy bass.
"I am not coming aboard just yet," called Hermione.
"Yes, you must!" called Heldstrom. "Your fadder has yoost sent vord
... 'Stop ringin' that bell!'"
"Stop it then," retorted Hermione. "I don't need it. The weather is
clearing. I can see your spars."
"You can see nodding!" growled Heldstrom, "but I can see fere you go
out no more ven der vedder iss t'ick! Next time you get no boat,
yoong lady!"
"I will be back in a few minutes," said Hermione. "_Au revoir_..."
She dipped her oars and pulled off into the fog, leaving Heldstrom
growling impotently on the schooner's deck.
"My parent," Applebo observed, "appears to be a bit of a despot."
"He is a dear," said Hermione.
"You will catch it when you go back."
"No. He will say nothing, but wait until next time. Before then I
will have told him why I prolonged my leave. Now tell me just what
you would like to have me say. Do you wish me to tell him all that
you have told me?"
For it had occurred to Hermione's practical mind that Applebo was
doing, from his standpoint, a very loyal thing in claiming as a
parent a man who, no matter how fine his personal qualities, was
after all merely the sailing-master of a schooner-yacht. Viewed from
a purely worldly aspect, Applebo was the social superior of Christian
Heldstrom. Applebo was a blood-relation to royalty, independently
well off, well educated, and a person to whom any society would be
glad to open its doors. His father, on the other hand, was an
ex-enlisted man of the United States Navy, at present holding a
position which, if not exactly menial, was not far from it. It were
not as though Applebo were drawn to his father by a tie of affection
or early obligation. Heldstrom had never laid eyes upon his son, nor
did Applebo owe his father anything but the mere fact of his physical
existence, which can scarcely be recognised as a debt of gratitude.
On the other hand, so far as Applebo knew, his father was merely a
poor sailorman, dependent on his meagre pay, already advanced in
years, and a possible care and burden for years to come. Impressed
as she was by the romantic aspects of the case, all of these things
occurred, nevertheless, to Hermione's practical reason and served
greatly to elevate her opinion of Harold Applebo.
To test him more thoroughly, she put forward, in a tentative way, a
little of what was in her mind.
"You are quite sure that you want to establish this relationship?"
she asked. "Of course, while Captain Heldstrom is a very splendid
man, and all of that, you really owe him nothing. And, socially,
there is some difference between you."
"Hermione!" Applebo's voice was actually pained.
"But what is the particular advantage of it to you?" persisted
Hermione.
"Advantage! Don't you think it's an advantage to have a father?
Especially, when he's as good a sort as you tell me that mine is?
You surprise me, Hermione!"
"But you are a young man of fortune and education and high
connections, while he..."
"Is my father," said Applebo, quietly.
The blood rushed to Hermione's face. Her blue eyes filled.
"Forgive me!" she cried. "I was just trying to ... to ... I wanted
to see if you had any snobbery about you...."
"But, my dear girl, how can one be snobbish about one's own father?
That would be so inconsistent!"
"Some people are," said Hermione.
"Then I am not that particular sort of fool ... which is lucky for
me, since I am so many others! No. I want my father. You don't
know what it means to me to find that there is somebody so close to
me. Hermione, I have been the most solitary person you can
imagine...."
In rapid, graphic words he told her of his lonely, friendless
boyhood; the long vacations, when other boys went to their homes and
he remained at the boarding-school; the envy with which he was wont
to listen to the recital of holiday sprees by his schoolmates.
Later, at college, his peculiar personality had marked him as one
apart, and, sensitive as he was, this aloofness he had accepted as a
quality of his destiny. Always of a romantic, imaginative, and
sentimental nature, expansiveness where his emotions were touched had
brought only ridicule, hence the gradual adoption of the mocking,
inscrutable pose.
"There were so many times," he told her, "when I couldn't help
expressing what I felt. People laughed at me. At first I fought;
then I learned that it saved a lot of wear and tear to laugh back ...
a little harder. So I took a pose that kept them guessing. People
like to laugh at you, and they don't particularly object when you
laugh at them, as long as they know what you are laughing at, and
that you really are laughing. But when they are puzzled to tell
whether you are really making fun of them, and if so at what, they
get shy of you and leave you alone. So I was left alone. How much
alone, nobody will ever know...."
The mist was in Hermione's eyes before he had finished. Applebo
interrupted his own narrative to look up and say:
"Where are you going?"
Hermione came back to earth with a sudden shock.
"I'm sure I don't know," said she. "To tell the truth, I don't even
know where we are. Do you?"
Applebo dropped his head and peered into the fog, and raised his
hand. Hermione stopped pulling and rested on her oars. Applebo
slightly turned his head to listen.
"I hear the swash of water ahead," he said. "That must be the far
side of the inlet."
"But I have been pulling more toward the mainland!" cried Hermione.
"I think that you have swerved a bit. There is scarcely any air
stirring, but what there is strikes me on the other cheek. Pull
ahead a little."
Hermione did so. Presently the swash of water on the rocks grew
plainly distinct, and, a few minutes later, a dark, irregular outline
reared itself through the fog.
"Rocks," said Applebo. "We are on the east side of the inlet."
"But I am sure that we are on the other side," said Hermione. She
raised her hand. "Listen...!"
From somewhere in the murk came the sound of eight bells.
"I must be getting back," said Hermione. "Which way?"
"Let me take the oars..."
Hermione nodded, and they shifted places. She was not tired, but she
wanted to see the strong, lithe body in action. Applebo picked up
the light oars and, without so much as a glance over his shoulder,
pulled off apparently at random into the fog. As he rowed, he told
her about his voyaging in pursuit of the _Shark_. Hermione was
amazed to learn how arduous this had sometimes been. Secure and
comfortable aboard the big, staunch _Shark_, it was not easy to
realise the conditions to be sometimes confronted by a little boat
like the _Daffodil_.
"You are like a gull..." she said. "Hello ... there's a boat ahead!"
"The yawl," said Applebo, indifferently.
Hermione opened her violet eyes very wide.
"I must have been pulling in a circle!" she exclaimed.
"You described quite an arc."
"But how did you know?"
"I felt it. Some of us have that instinct of the hound and the
sea-turtle and the gull. It's not subject to analysis. At sea, I
never take a sight ... but I use the lead a good deal." He laid the
skiff alongside.
"Before I go," said Hermione, "I want to peep into the cabin. May I?"
"If you like. I'd be more hospitable, but something tells me that it
is not convenable, and, since you are Hermione, you are still a mere
child ... how old...?"
"Twenty."
"An infant in arms! However ... so long as they are the proper arms
... and I'm so much older that it doesn't matter. Come aboard."
He stepped out and extended one hand to Hermione, making fast the
skiff with the other.
"How old are you?" asked Hermione.
"Getting senile. I have been out of college four years; that makes
me twenty-five. At such an age there are no longer rules of
propriety; one thinks only of the grave. How do you like my cabin?"
Hermione, with a delicious sense of wrongdoing, examined with rapture
the cabin of the _Daffodil_. This inspection was brief to the point
of being cursory, and, as she came up through the companionway, she
heard the bell of the _Shark_ again tolling its insistent summons.
"And to think," she cried, "that you should have followed us all of
those weary knots on this little thing! And just because you knew
that your father was aboard!"
"Hermione, filial affection was _not_ the lure of the last two
thousand miles."
"What was...?"
"Get in your skiff and I will tell you."
Hermione's heart stampeded furiously. It was frightened less at
these discreet words than at a sudden flash in the clear eyes of her
companion. Every sentient impulse warned her to get immediately into
her skiff and row away, just as fast as she could. But other and
stronger impulses made this craven course exceedingly difficult. She
did not want to row off into the cold, grey mist and leave new
problems to be solved by the lonely, romantic figure beside her. She
felt that he needed her, and this need, to a person of Hermione's
rich nature, was a far more impelling force than any need of her own.
She looked a little fearfully at Applebo. He was smiling at her with
the air of one about to say a conventional farewell ... or about to
try to do so. Hermione thought of his loneliness ... the Finn was
still ashore ... and the tears rose to her eyes. She lingered, and
from afar the _Shark's_ bell chided her.
"Good-bye..." said Hermione, tremulously, and held out her hand.
Applebo took it, raised it in his, and brushed it with his lips.
"Good-bye," he answered, almost brusquely.
Still Hermione did not go. Perhaps it may have occurred to her that
inasmuch as she had been trying to go, without success, for the last
half-hour, an additional half-minute would not particularly matter.
This is feminine reasoning, and as sound as any such, and Hermione
was exceedingly feminine. Perhaps, also, there flashed across her
memory the recollection of another farewell, and of something which
had happened, partly under water. At any rate, she lingered. This
was very wrong of Hermione, and if she had had a mother, poor girl,
instead of an elderly Norwegian sailorman impotently banging a bell,
it never could have happened. But she lingered. Some instinct
advised her that there was still something to be told; that she had
not heard the entire tale, and that there would be a singular
incompletion to the whole affair until she was told it. In which she
was quite correct. Long-lost parents have an undoubted value, but it
dwindles shockingly before that of new-found loves.
"Good-bye..." said Hermione, invitingly, and held out her hand.
Applebo had honestly meant to put her back in her boat and give her a
shove in the direction of the patient bell. But there are limits to
all human self-control, and Hermione at that moment stood outside
them. There was a sad little droop to her shoulders, and to the
corners of her pretty mouth, and the roses in her cheeks and violets
in her eyes were blazing through the fog like flowers in a neglected
garden. In that moment Hermione's sweetness was certainly not
intended to expend itself on several cubic fathoms of fog, and, if
Applebo permitted this, he would have been a fool and not worth the
trouble of telling about. He had been thinking not of himself, but
of Hermione, and, when he saw that Hermione was not quite content, he
forgot that she was a very young girl, and he a wise and world-worn
man of twenty-five, of whom the motto should have been--_memento
mori_. Wherefore, he said:
"Hermione, I have told you the truth, and nothing but the truth, but
not the whole truth. I followed the _Shark_ because I wanted a
father. But, since we met on the beach at Shoal Harbour and swam off
together to the schooner, this splendid filial devotion has been
quite eclipsed by something else. I have been able to think of
nothing but a girl in a green bathing suit, and, when your father
gave me that 'dare' to follow him all up and down the coast, I took
it up because I did not want to lose her out of my daily life. The
verses that I have been sending from time to time during this chase
have been the only really sincere ones I ever wrote...."
"Then the 'Hermione' ones that you sent to me were not sincere?"
"They are not insincere, but their sentiment was directed towards the
Ideal. After I met you on the beach, they were offered to the Real."
"And went to Cécile..."
Applebo bent his bushy brows upon her in a way curiously suggestive
of Heldstrom. Hermione wondered that she had never noticed the
resemblance.
"Hermione," said he, "I have been a silly, careless fool and you do
well to remind me of it. But do you remember having told me on the
beach at Shoal Harbour that you had never seen any of my verses?"
The blood rushed into the girl's face and she dropped her eyes.
Hermione had thought of that lie many times, but she was in the hope
that Applebo had forgotten it.
"Since you didn't know me when you saw me," she answered, with a
schoolgirl pout, "_I_ did not intend to put you right. What made you
send the verses in the first place?"
"The idea appealed to my romantic nature. I had seen you on Fifth
Avenue and admired your walk. I saw you many times, but never face
to face. I like to write verses, and one writes better when one has
a definite object. They were harmless things, and I knew that you
would not take too seriously such an act of unasked devotion on the
part of one whom you had never seen. Nor did you."
Hermione was silent for an instant. Then she said, almost shyly:
"And afterwards..."
Her violet eyes wandered fearsomely from side to side, aloft, into
the fog, at her skiff, to rest finally on those of Applebo. The
clear, amber ones, which seemed to have grown suddenly dark, were
waiting for them. They telegraphed a message which so shook Hermione
that she gave a little gasp and reached for the wire stay. The dense
fog wrapped them about in its protecting folds.
"Hermione," said Applebo, in his deepest voice. "I think that you
had better get into your skiff and go back to the _Shark_ and tell
them to stop ringing that bell. The 'afterwards' will wait until
another day."
"I want it now!" murmured Hermione, scarcely knowing what she said.
Her long lashes dropped on the rose-red cheeks. Her heart was
fluttering wildly and she gripped the wet wire with all of her
strength. She scarcely saw Applebo as he stepped quickly to her side
and took her hand in his big one, crushing it even more tightly to
the iron shroud. Then she looked up in frightened questioning,
surprised to find him so close and marvelling at the breadth of the
big chest. Her head came a little above its upper level, and
Hermione was a big girl. Close as he stood to her, Hermione was
obliged to give her face an upward tilt to look into his eyes, which
she did, questioningly, yet with a swift, wild exultation.
One downward step and Hermione would be in her skiff, prepared for
flight and the security of the chiding bell. But she could not take
it. Her feet were glued to the deck; her body as though lashed to
the wire stay. Applebo began to speak, and she scarcely knew what he
said, even while she thrilled at the deep, organ-noted voice.
"Hermione ... Hermione ... you are still a little girl and perhaps I
am doing wrong in telling you these things. I have loved you,
sweetheart, from the moment I saw you that morning on the beach. I
struggled against it, but it has been too strong. You are my Ideal
quickened into life, and, though we scarcely know each other, all the
nature that is in me cries out for you. When I say that I love you,
I say it all. Now you must get into your skiff, dear, and go back.
From this time on our attitude shall be the conventional one. I
shall try to win you, but first there are other things to do. Go,
Hermione."
Just as when he had kissed her in the water, Hermione felt all of her
personal volition leave her. She could only cling to the stay and
stare at him dumbly with vague, dark violet eyes. So she looked up
into his face, her own colourless, except for a crimson splash in the
centre of either cheek, and her coral lips trembling. Her black hair
was veiled in the grey, clinging mist. She suffered from no lack of
strength, but her mind and body were filled with the pleasant
lethargy which might come of a rare old wine, and which would quickly
pass. Hermione felt no hurry for it to pass.
So she clung to the stay and stared at the poet, and muffled in the
fog came the notes of the bell, querulous and complaining, with a
hint of impatience in its quickened beat. Applebo looked at her
questioningly ... and Hermione's eyes shouted the exultant answer to
this query. A golden flame leaped from the amber depths so close to
her face, and, for some strange reason, Hermione felt the hot tears
obscure her vision and the fog became a swirling chaos of grey. Her
body swayed as she stood. She tried to say "Good-bye," but the
quivering lips brought no sound.
And then she felt a strong, encircling arm about her, while her
yielding body was drawn close and her pale, tear-stained, upturned
face fell forward against the man's broad chest. Her hand loosed its
hold on the stay, of which she no longer had any need, and with its
mate stole up to rest on the strong shoulders. Hermione gave a
little gasp; her arms went about his neck. There was a torrent of
words in her ears, crashing like deep, glorious chords, and she heard
her own voice saying: "Yes ... yes ... I love you, I love you...."
[Illustration: And then she felt a strong, encircling arm about her]
All was swift and wonderfully rapturous. Kisses smothered the words
pouring from her lips, and these lips quickly found a far more potent
manner of expression. Scarcely any time this lasted, if one is to
figure time in moments such as these by stupid seconds, which might
be each an eternity.
Hermione's scattered senses were rallied by the _chunk-a-chunk_ of
oars close at hand. She felt Applebo turn to glance over his
shoulder, and looked up to see him peering into the fog. Hermione
drew herself away and stood for a moment, dazed and panting, for she
had need of breath, poor girl.
"Here comes the Finn," said Applebo. "Now you must go, darling...."
Scarcely knowing how she got there, Hermione found herself back in
the skiff staring blindly at the compass which Applebo placed on the
thwart again. "Good-bye..." she murmured, and thrust at the yawl's
side with her oar. She held up her hand, and Applebo leaned far down
to kiss it. Hermione dipped her oars, and was wafted into the
swimming mist.
Applebo stood looking after her, his face like ivory, but his eyes
like yellow diamonds. The fog swam and eddied in a faint puff of
air, striking down over the high bank on the shoreward side of the
harbour.
The sound of Hermione's oars grew fainter and fainter, until his ear
could no longer follow it. Then, as he listened, the _Shark's_ bell
stopped ringing.