TAKING A SAIL.
The moon rose early that evening and flooded Portmaris with a light
that transformed it, already picturesque enough, into a fairy village
beside an enchanted ocean. Leslie sat at the open window of her room,
her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed on the sea, now calmly
rippling as if it were rocking itself to sleep in the moonbeams.
Her father had gone to bed, early as it was, worn out with his long
day's work and the excitement produced by the sale of his picture, and
Leslie was free to recall the events of the day.
Her life hitherto had been so gray and sober, so uneventful, that the
incidents which had been crowded into this day had almost bewildered
her.
She ought, in common fairness to that individual, have thought first
and most of Ralph Duncombe; but it was upon that other young man who
had plunged into the waves to reach Dick that her mind was fixed.
Beauty, man's beauty, doesn't count much with women; indeed, it has
been remarked by the observant that some of the ugliest men have
married the prettiest girls, and it was not Yorke's handsome face
which had impressed Leslie. It would be hard to say exactly what it
was in him that had done so; perhaps it was the frank smile, the free
and musical laugh, that devil-may-care air of his, or the pleasant
voice which seemed to float in through the window upon the moonbeams,
and find an echo in Leslie's heart. Once or twice she tried to cast
him out of her mind. There seemed to her something almost approaching
unmaidenliness in dwelling so much upon this stranger; the young man
whom she had seen for only a few minutes, and whom she might never
see again. Why, she did not even know his name, or at any rate only
a part of it. "Yorke," Mr. Temple had called him, and she murmured
it absently. "Yorke." It seemed to her to fit him exactly. It had a
brave, alert sound in it. She could fancy him ready for any danger,
any emergency. He had plunged into the waves after Dick, as if it were
quite a matter of course that he should do so, had done it as naturally
as if there were no other course open to him. She could see him now, as
he came out, with Dick in his arms, his hair plastered on his face, his
eyes bright and laughing.
And how anxious he had been to avoid any thanks or fuss! It was wicked
of him, of course, to tell a story and account for his besoaked
condition by stating that he had fallen off the breakwater--Leslie
smiled as she thought of the thinness of the excuse--but she understood
why he had fibbed, and--forgave him.
"Don't you like this Mr. Yorke, Dick?" she said to Dick, who lay in a
contented coil on her lap. "You ought to do so, for if it had not been
for him you would be at the bottom of the sea, little doggie, by this
time."
Probably Dick would have liked to have retorted, "And if it hadn't been
for him I shouldn't have gone in at all."
Then her thoughts wandered to the crippled hunchback, and her heart
thrilled with gratitude as she thought of his kindness; Mrs. Whiting
had said that he was a nobleman, but there had evidently been a
mistake; very likely the simple-minded landlady had concluded that no
one traveling with a man-servant could be less than a man of title.
Leslie thought of the two men--but most of "Yorke"--and all they had
said and done for some time before Ralph Duncombe insisted upon his
share in her reflections, and as she thought of him she sighed. She
pitied him, and was sorry for him, but she did not want to see him
again. He had frightened as well as touched her by the passionate
avowal which had accompanied the ring.
The ring! She had utterly forgotten it! She put her hand to her pocket,
turned it out, but the ring was not there. What had she done with it?
It was fast closed in her hand, she remembered, when she heard Dick's
piteous yap; and then she had sprung up, and run down the beach. She
must have dropped it among the pebbles.
Her heart smote her reproachfully. The least she could do in return for
the passionate love Ralph Duncombe had lavished so uselessly upon her
was to keep his ring! She rose, troubled and remorseful. The tide had
been going out when she dropped it; it was not likely that it would be
seen by any one, and it was probably lying where it had fallen. She
seemed to see the plain gold circlet lying there in the silent night,
neglected and despised.
Her hat and jacket lay on the bed; she snatched them up, put them on
hastily, and left the house.
A light burned behind the windows of Marine Villa opposite, and she
glanced up at it, trying to picture to herself the two men in the
sitting-room; the one so strong and stalwart, the other so weak and
crippled.
As she went quickly down the street she was conscious of a new and
strange feeling; it was half pleasant, half painful. It seemed to her
as if some spirit of change had entered her quiet, peaceful, uneventful
life, as if she were on the verge of some novel experience. The feeling
disquieted her. She looked up at the stars almost hidden by the haze
of the glorious light thrown broadcast by the moon, and there came
into her mind some verses--they were from the Persian, though she did
not know it--which she had seen under a picture in one of the Academy
exhibitions--
"Love is abroad to-night; his wings
Beat softly at Heaven's gate!"
Murmuring the musical lines, she passed to the quay, and leaping
lightly onto the beach, made her way to the breakwater.
At nine o'clock Portmaris, as a rule, goes to bed.
No one was stirring; the street, the quay, were empty. The tide was
far out now, and the sands lay a golden beat between sea and beach,
unbroken save where at the very margin of the lapping wavelets a boat
lay at anchor.
Not even a greater enthusiast than Francis Lisle could have desired a
more delicious picture than she made flitting slowly yet lightly over
the beach, her graceful figure casting a long shadow behind her. "Night
is youth's season," says the poet, and Leslie's heart was beating
to-night with a strange pulsation.
She reached the spot where she had sat with Ralph Duncombe's ring in
her hand, and going down on one knee searched carefully. The bright
light revealed every pebble, and, convinced at last that it was not
there, but that she must have held it until she had run some way down
the sands, before she dropped it, she rose from her knees with a sigh,
and was going back when she saw a man's form lying full length on the
top of the breakwater.
It was a young fisherman apparently, for he was clad in the
tight-fitting blue jersey and long sea boots, and wore the red woolen
cap common to men and boys in Portmaris. He was stretched out full
length with his head resting on his arms, his face upturned, perfectly
still and motionless.
It occurred to Leslie that he might have picked up the ring, and, well
aware that his class was as honest as the day she went up to him,
saying:
"Have you found a ring on the beach, just here?"
The man did not answer nor move, and when she got quite up to him she
saw that he was asleep.
She saw, too, something else; that it was not a Portmaris fisherman,
but the young man whom Mr. Temple had called "Yorke."
With a sudden rush of crimson to her face she was about to beat a
retreat when Yorke started slightly, opened his eyes, and stared up at
her.
The next instant he was off the breakwater and on his feet.
"By George!" he exclaimed, with a bated breath. "It is you, Miss
Lisle!"
"Yes, it is I," said Leslie as calmly and composedly as she could, and
from the effort for composure her voice sounded rather cold.
"I beg your pardon. Of course it is. But----," he hesitated a moment.
"Well, the fact is, I was dreaming about you----." He stopped, as if he
were afraid he had given offense.
But Leslie smiled.
"It must have been an uncomfortable dream," she said, glancing at the
breakwater.
"No," he said. "I was never more comfortable in my life. I'm more used
to roughing it than you'd think. I suppose it was the beauty of the
night that tempted you as it tempted me?" he went on, with his frank
eyes on her face.
Leslie looked down. She could not ask him the question she had put to
the supposed fisherman--if he had found her ring, of course, he would
give it to her.
"Yes," she said.
"I told Dolph it was too good to sit indoors," he went on. "That's my
cousin, the man you saw to-day, you know."
"Mr. Temple?" said Leslie.
"Mr.--yes, Mr. Temple," he assented, after a moment's hesitation. "And
I tried to lure him out; but he doesn't care about stirring after
dinner, poor old chap----," he broke off with a laugh. "You are looking
at my get-up?" he said.
Leslie smiled.
"I suppose you took me for one of the marine monsters who abound here.
Fact is, I found my things wetter than I supposed----."
"I knew you would!" said Leslie, with an air of gentle triumph.
"Yes, and as I hadn't a change with me I borrowed a suit from the
landlady's boy; a 'boy' about six feet high. I fancy I rather upset my
cousin's man sitting down to dinner in 'em; but they're astonishingly
comfortable. I'm half inclined to take to them as a regular thing.
After all, one might be worse than a fisherman, Miss Lisle."
"Very much," said Leslie, with a smile.
"Oh, you're surely not going!" he said, as she half turned toward the
quay. "It's far better out here than indoors; and it's early, too.
Won't you walk across the sand to the edge of the sea? It's quite dry."
He moved in that direction as he spoke, and Leslie, with a twinge of
conscience, moved also.
"It's a pity all life can't be a moonlight night," he said, after a
pause, and with a faint sigh. "By George, it would be grand on the
water to-night. There's just enough wind to keep a boat going--and
there's a boat!" he exclaimed, pointing to the boat lying at anchor at
the edge of the water as if he had made a discovery which was to render
this weary world happy for evermore. "What do you say to going for a
little sail, Miss Lisle?"
He put the question very much as one truant from school might put it to
another, only a little more timorously.
"It would be splendid, a thing to be remembered. Oh, don't say no! I've
set my heart upon it----."
"Why should you not go?" said Leslie, trying to smile, and to keep from
her eyes the wistful longing which his audacious suggestion had aroused.
"By myself!" he said, reproachfully, and with a kind of high-minded
wonder. "I wouldn't be so selfish. Come, Miss Lisle--I--I mean we--may
never have another chance like this. You don't get such nights as this
in England often. And you need not be nervous. I can manage a boat in
half a gale. But never mind if you think you wouldn't be safe."
This may have been a stroke of artfulness or pure ingenuousness; it
settled the matter.
"I have never been afraid in my life--that I remember," said Leslie,
conscientiously.
"Then that settles it!" he said, in that tone of free joyousness which
appeals to a woman more than any tone a man can use. "Here we are--and
by Jove, here's a real sea-monster asleep in the boat. Hallo, there!"
he called out to an old man who lay curled up in the bottom of the boat.
Leslie laughed softly.
"It is of no use calling to him," she said. "He is stone deaf. It is
old Will, and he is waiting for the turn of the tide."
"Like a good many more of us," said Yorke, cheerfully, and he was about
to shake the man, but Leslie put her hand on his arm and stayed him.
"I--I think I had better wake him," she said. "He is old, and not very
good-tempered, and----."
"I see. All right," said Yorke. "I'll keep here in the background. If
he refuses to go tell him we'll take his boat and do without him."
Leslie bent over the gunwale, and touched the old man gently. He
stirred after a moment or two, and got up on his elbow, frowning at her.
Leslie indicated by expressive pantomime that they wanted to go for
a sail, and, after glancing at the sky and at Yorke, the old fellow
nodded surlily, and got out of the boat.
Yorke helped him to push the boat into the water.
"And now how are you going to get in?" he said to Leslie, but before
she could answer the question old Will took her in his arms and carried
her bodily into the boat.
Leslie smiled.
"He is a very self-willed old man, and no one in Portmaris interferes
with or contradicts him, perhaps because he is deaf."
"I see," said Yorke. "I never realized until to-night the great
advantages of that affliction."
He went forward as he spoke to assist with the sail, but the old man
surlily waved him back into the stern.
"All right, William, I'll steer then," he said; but he had no sooner
got hold of the tiller than Will angrily signed to him to release it,
and pointed to Leslie.
"I think he wants me to steer," she said, with a faint blush. "I am
often out sailing with him."
"He evidently regards me as a land lubber, whatever that is," said
Yorke. "But, right! the password for to-night is, 'Don't cross old
William!'"
He dropped down at her feet and leaned his head upon his hand, and
sighed with supreme, unbounded content, and there was silence for a
few minutes as the boat glided out to sea; then he said:
"Do you think old William would fly into a paroxysm of rage if I
offered him a pipe of tobacco, Miss Lisle?"
"You might try," said Leslie, and the tone of her voice was like an
echo of his. The two truants were enjoying themselves, and had no
thought of the schoolmaster--just then.
Yorke took out his pouch, and flung it with dextrous aim into the old
man's lap. He took it up, glowered at the donor for a moment, then
nodded surlily, and, filling his pipe, pitched the pouch back.
"We still live!" said Yorke, and he was about to fill his own pipe, but
remembered himself and stopped.
"Please smoke if you wish to," said Leslie, "I do not mind. We must not
go far," she added.
"Not farther than Quebec or, say, Boulogne," said Yorke. "All right,
Miss Lisle, we'll turn directly you say so. How delightful this is! I
may have been happier in the course of an ill-spent life, but I don't
remember it. Are you sorry you came? Please answer truthfully, and
don't mind my feelings."
But Leslie did not answer. The strange feeling which had haunted her
as she left the house was growing more distinct and defiant, stronger
and more aggressive. Was it really she, Leslie Lisle, who was sailing
over the moonlit sea with this careless and light-hearted young man, or
should she wake presently in her tiny room in Sea View and find it all
a dream?
Happy? Was this novel sensation, as of some vague undefined joy,
happiness or what?
She was wise to leave the question unanswered!
Yorke smoked in silence for a minute or two, then he turned on his
elbow so that he could look up at her.
"Miss Lisle," he said, "were you looking for something when you came
down the beach just now? I ask because I thought you looked rather
troubled----."
"But you were asleep!" said Leslie.
He colored, and his eyes dropped.
"I've given myself away," he said, penitently. "No, Miss Lisle, I
wasn't asleep. But I thought it better to pretend, as the children say,
lest you should take fright and run away."
Leslie looked away from him.
"You are angry? Well, it serves me right. But don't think of it. Try
and forgive me if you can, for I was half asleep, and I was dreaming
of you--there, I've offended you again! But don't you know how you can
dream though you are wide awake? I was wondering whether I should see
you again--there was no harm in that, was there?--wondering whether
I should have seen you or spoken to you at all if it hadn't been for
Dick----. By the way, how is Dick?"
"He is all right," she said, the tension caused by his former words
suddenly relieved, "but I do not think he will ever forgive you for
saving his life."
"I'm afraid not," he said. "But you have not answered my question yet."
"Which one?" asked Leslie, with a smile.
"Whether you had lost anything," he said.
"Yes, I had," she replied, in a low voice.
He put his hand in his waistcoat-pocket, and took out the ring and held
it up.
"Is this it?" he said, and his voice was suddenly grave and serious.
Leslie took it from his fingers.
"Thank you. Yes," she said. "Where did you find it?"
He was silent a moment as if lost in thought, then he said, as if with
an effort:
"On the beach; just where you had been sitting this afternoon. You
dropped it, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Leslie.
There was a pause.
"You are glad to get it back?"
"Yes," she said, looking straight in front of her.
"An old favorite, Miss Lisle?" his eyes fixed on the beautiful face
over which the moonbeams fell lovingly.
"N-o," she said, the faint color creeping into her cheeks.
"No! But you were glad to get it back. You didn't seem so very glad,
you know."
"No, I was not so very glad," she said, almost inaudibly.
He seemed relieved, and yet rather doubtful still.
"It's singular," he said. "But this is the second thing of yours I have
found to-day."
"Yes."
"And they say that if you find two things in one day you are sure to
lose something yourself," he murmured, a serious, intent look coming
into his dark eyes.
"But the day has gone, and you have not lost anything!" said Leslie,
with a smile.
His eyes dropped from his intense regard of her face.
"I am not so sure!" he said.
Did she hear him?