"Say, Bert! We can take Big Bear along in our boat. Isn't that so?"
Merefleet looked up from his paper as he heard the words. They were
seated at the next table at lunch, his American friend and her
excessively English cousin. Merefleet noticed that she was dressed for
boating. She wore a costume of white linen, and a Panama hat was crammed
jauntily on the soft, dark hair. She was anything but dignified. Yet
there was something splendid in the very recklessness of her beauty. She
was a queen who did not need to assert her rights. There were other women
present, and Merefleet was not even conscious of the fact.
"Who?" asked Seton, in response to her careless inquiry.
She nodded in Merefleet's direction and caught his eye as she did so.
"He's the cutest man in U.S.," she said, staring him straight in the face
without sign of recognition. "But he's real lazy. He saw me making
custard at Grandpa Quiller's this morning, and he wasn't even smart
enough to lift the saucepan off the fire. I thought he might have had
spunk enough for that, anyway."
Twenty-four hours earlier Merefleet would have deliberately hunched his
shoulders, turned his back, and read his paper. But his education was in
sure hands. He had made rapid progress since the day before.
He leant a little towards his critic and said gravely:
"Pray accept my apologies for the omission! To tell you the truth, I was
not watching the progress of the cookery."
The girl nodded as if appeased.
"You can come and sit at this table," she said, indicating a chair
opposite to her. "I guess you know my cousin Bert Seton."
"What makes you guess that?" Merefleet inquired, changing his seat as
directed.
She looked at him with a little smile of superior knowledge. "I guess
lots," she said, but proffered no explanation of her shrewd conclusion.
Young Seton greeted Merefleet with less cordiality than he had displayed
on the previous evening. There was a suggestion of caution in his manner
that created a somewhat unfavourable impression in Merefleet's mind.
Already he was beginning to wonder how these two came to be thus isolated
in the forgotten little town of Old Silverstrand. It was not a natural
state of affairs. Neither the girl with her marvellous beauty, nor the
man with his peculiar concentration of purpose, was a fitting figure for
such a background. They were out of place--most noticeably so.
Merefleet was the very last man to make observations of such a
description. But this was a matter so obvious and so undeniably strange
that it forced itself upon him half against his will. He became strongly
aware that Seton did not desire his presence in the boat with him and his
cousin. He did not fathom the objection. But its existence was not to be
ignored. And Merefleet wondered a little, as he cast about in his mind
for a suitable excuse wherewith to decline the girl's invitation.
"It's very good of you to ask me to accompany you, Miss Ward," he said
presently. "But I know that Quiller the younger is under the impression
that I have engaged him to row me out of the harbour and bring me back
again. And I don't see very well how I can cancel the engagement."
Miss Ward nudged her cousin at this speech.
"Oh, if he isn't just quaint!" she said. "Look here, Bert! You're running
this show. Tell Mr. Merefleet it's all fixed up, and if he won't come
along with us he won't go at all, as we've got Quiller's boat!"
Seton glanced up, slightly frowning.
"My dear Mab," he said, "allow Mr. Merefleet to please himself! The fact
that you are willing to put your life in my hands day after day is no
guarantee of my skill as a rower, remember."
"Oh, skittles!" said Mab irrelevantly.
And Seton, meeting Merefleet's eyes, shrugged his shoulders as if
disclaiming all further responsibility.
Mab leant forward.
"You'd better come, Mr. Merefleet," she said in a motherly tone. "It'll
be a degree more lively than mooning around by yourself."
And Merefleet yielded, touched by something indescribable in the
beautiful, glowing eyes that were lifted to his. Apparently she wanted
him to go, and it seemed to him too small a thing to refuse. Perhaps,
also, he consulted his own inclination.
Seton dropped his distant manner after a time. Nevertheless the
impression of being under the young man's close observation lingered with
Merefleet, and Mab herself seemed to feel a strain. She grew almost
silent till lunch was over, and then, recovering, she entered into a
sprightly conversation with Merefleet.
They went down to the shore shortly after, and embarked in Quiller's
boat. Mab sat in the stern under a scarlet sunshade and talked gaily to
her two companions. She was greatly amused when Merefleet insisted upon
doing his share of the work.
"I love to see you doing the galley-slave," she said. "I know you hate
it, you poor old Bear."
But Merefleet did not hate his work. He sat facing her throughout the
afternoon, gazing to his heart's content on the perfect picture before
him. He wore his hands to blisters, and the sun beat mercilessly down
upon him. But he felt neither weariness nor impatience, neither regret
nor surliness.
A magic touch had started the life in his veins; the revelation of a
wandering searchlight had transformed his sordid world into a palace of
delight. He accepted the fact without question. He had no wish to go
either forward or backward.
The blue sea and the blue sky, and the distant, shining shore. These were
what he had often longed for in the rush and tumult of a great, unresting
city. But in the foreground of his picture, beyond desire and more
marvellous than imagination, was the face of the loveliest woman he had
ever seen.