“I’ve run over to look up Mrs. Rattleton,” said Livingstone, as he
discussed with evident relish the _filet_ that Mr. Port charitably hoped
would choke him. “Very likely you haven’t met her, for she’s only just
got here. But you’ll like her, I know, for she’s ever so jolly. She’s
promised to play propriety for me in a party that we want to make up
aboard the yacht. The squadron won’t get down from New York for a week
yet, and I’ve come up ahead of it so that we can have a cruise to the
Shoals and back before the races. Of course, Miss Lee, you won’t fly in
the face of Fate, after this providential meeting, by refusing to join
our party; at least if you do you will make me wretched to the end of my
days. And we will try to make you comfortable on board, sir,” he added,
politely, turning to Mr. Port. “I have a tolerably fair cook, and ice
isn’t the only thing in the ice-chest, I assure you.”
“How very kind you are, Mr. Livingstone,” Dorothy hastened to say, in
order to head off her uncle’s inevitable refusal. “Of course we will go,
with the greatest possible pleasure. It is very odd how things fall out
sometimes. Now only this morning I was begging Uncle Hutchinson to take
me off yachting, and he was saying how much he enjoyed being at sea, and
how he really thought that if it wasn’t for his age--wasn’t it absurd
of him to talk about his age? He is not old at all, the dear!--he would
have a yacht of his own. And almost before the words are fairly out of
our mouths here you drop from the clouds, or are cast up by the sea,
it’s all the same thing, and give us both just what we have been longing
for. At least, Uncle Hutchinson pretended to be longing for it only in
case he could be young enough to enjoy it; but if he doesn’t think he’s
young now, I’d like to know what he’ll call himself when he’s fifty!”
And then, facing around sharply upon her uncle, Dorothy concluded: “The
idea of pretending that _you_ are too old to go yachting! Really, Uncle
Hutchinson, I am ashamed of you!”
As has been intimated, if there was any one subject upon which Mr. Port
was especially sensitive, it was the subject of his age. As the parish
register of St. Peter’s all too plainly proved, he never would see sixty
again; but this awkward record was in an out-of-the-way place, and
the agreeable fiction that he advanced in various indirect ways to the
effect that he was a trifle turned of forty-seven was not likely to be
officially contradicted. And it is not impossible, so tenacious was he
upon this point, that had the official proof been produced, he would
have denied its authenticity. For it was Mr. Port’s firm determination
still to figure before the world as a youngish, middle-aged man.
To say that Miss Lee deliberately set herself to playing upon this
weakness of her guardian’s, possibly, remotely possibly, would be
doing her injustice. But the fact is obvious that she succeeded by
her cleverly turned discourse in landing her esteemed relative fairly
between the horns of an exceedingly awkward dilemma: either Mr. Port
must accept the invitation and be horribly ill, or he must reject it,
and so throw over his pretensions to elderly youth.
For a moment the unhappy gentleman hung in the wind, and Dorothy
regretted that she had not made her statement of the case still
stronger. Indeed, she was about to supplement it by a remark to the
effect that people never thought of giving up yachting until they were
turned of sixty, when, to her relief, her uncle slowly filled away on
the right tack. His acceptance was expressed in highly ungracious terms;
but, as has been said, Dorothy never troubled herself about forms,
provided she compassed results. The moment that he had uttered the fatal
words, Mr. Port fell to cursing himself in his own mind for being such
a fool; but the same reason that had impelled him to give his consent
withheld him from retracting it. He knew that he was going to be
desperately miserable; but, at least, nobody could say that he was old.
“I’m ever so much obliged to you, Miss Lee, and to you too, Mr. Port,”
said Livingstone. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and hunt up
Mrs. Rattle-ton, and tell her what a splendid raise I’ve made, and help
her organize the rest of the party. We shall have only two more. It’s a
bore to have more than six people on board a yacht. I don’t know why it
is, I’m sure, but if you have more than six they always get to fighting.
Queer, isn’t it?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Port. “Mrs. Rattleton? May I ask if this
is the Mrs. Rattleton from New York who was here last season, the one
whose bathing costume was so--so very eccentric, and about whom there
was so much very disagreeable talk?”
“Mrs. Rattleton _is_ from New York, and she _was_ here last season,”
Livingstone answered. “But I can’t say that I remember anything
eccentric in her bathing costume, except that it was exceedingly
becoming; and I certainly never heard any disagreeable talk about her.
There may have been such talk about her, but perhaps it was thought just
as well not to have it in my presence. Mrs. Rattleton is my cousin, Mr.
Port--she was a Van Twiller, you know. Do you happen to remember any
of the things that were said about her, and who said them?” Livingstone
spoke with extreme courtesy; but there was something in his tone that
caused Mr. Port suddenly to think of the tip of Prince Sporetti’s left
ear, and that led him to reply hurriedly, and by no means lucidly:
“Certainly--no--yes--that is to say, I can’t exactly remember anything
in particular. I’m sure I was led to believe from what was said that she
was a very charming woman. No, I don’t remember at all.”
“Ah, perhaps it is just as well,” Livingstone replied, gravely. “But how
lucky!” he added; “there she is now. Everybody is at the Casino about
this time of day, I fancy. May I bring her over and present her to you,
Miss Lee?”
“Of course you may, Mr. Livingstone. I shall be delighted to meet her.
And if she is to matronize me, the sooner that I begin to get accustomed
to her severities the better.”
And then Mr. Hutchinson Port suffered a fresh pang of misery when the
presentation was accomplished and he was forced to say approximately
pleasant things to a lady whose decidedly ballet-like attire in the
surf--or, to be precise, on the beach above high-water-mark, where,
for some occult reason, she usually saw fit to do the most of her
bathing--joined to the exceeding celerity of her conduct generally, had
marked her during the preceding season as the conspicuous centre of one
phase of life at the Pier. Nor was Mr. Port’s lot made happier as
he listened to the brisk discussion that ensued in regard to the
organization of the yachting party, and found that its two remaining
members were to be drawn, as was only natural, from the eminently
meteoric set to which Mrs. Rattleton belonged.
Had time been given Mr. Port for consideration it is probable that he
would have collected his mental forces sufficiently to have enabled him
to lodge a remonstrance; he might even--though this is doubtful, for
Dorothy’s voting power was vigorous--have accomplished a veto. But
projects in which Mrs. Rattleton was concerned never went slowly; and
in the present case the necessity for getting back in time for the
races really compelled haste. And so it came to pass that not until
the _Fleetwings_ was off the Brenton’s Reef light-ship, with her nose
pointed well up into the north-east, was there framed in Mr. Port’s
slow-moving mind a suitable line of argument upon which to base a
peremptory refusal to go upon the expedition--and by that time he was so
excruciatingly ill in his own cabin that coherent utterance and converse
with his kind were alike impossible.
So far as Mr. Port was concerned the ensuing six days made up an
epoch in his life that can only be described as an agonized blank. And
when--as it seemed to him many ages later--the _Fleetwings_ once more
cast anchor off Narragansett Pier, and he stepped shakily from the
schooner’s gig to the Casino dock, the usual plumpness and ruddiness of
his face had given place to a yellow leanness, and his weight had been
reduced by very nearly twenty pounds. The cruise had been a flying one,
or he never would have finished it. After the first six hours he would
have landed on a desert island cheerfully--and it is not impossible that
a hint from Dorothy as to her uncle’s probable movements should a harbor
be made had induced Livingstone to give the land a wide berth.
Dorothy came ashore blooming. “You don’t know, Uncle Hutchinson,”
she said, “what a perfectly lovely time I’ve had”--and this cheerful
assertion was the literal truth, for Mr. Port had entered his cabin
before the yacht had crossed the line between Beaver Tail and Point
Judith, and had not emerged from it until the anchor went overboard.
“And you don’t know,” Miss Lee went on with effusion, “how grateful your
angel is to you for helping her to have such a delightful cruise. I’m
sorry that you haven’t been very well, Uncle Hutchinson; but I know
that you will be all the better for it. Poor dear mamma, you know, was
bilious too, and going to sea always made her wretched; but she used to
be wonderfully well always when she got on shore again. And you’ll be
wonderfully well too, you dear; and that will be your reward for helping
your angel to have such a perfectly delightful time.”
Mr. Port made no reply to this address, for his condition of collapse
was too complete to permit him to give form in words to the thoughts
of rage and resentment which were burning in the depths of his injured
soul. Without a word to one single member of the party, he climbed
heavily into a carriage and was driven directly to his hotel--while
Dorothy, still under the chaperonage of Mrs. Rattleton, gayly joined
the pleasant little lunch-party at the Casino with which the yacht
voyage came to an end.