CAPTIVATING MARY
So Elbert Carstairs's dream had come true, and his daughter was going
home to him at his desire. She stood on his yacht, as truly a prisoner
as though she wore a ball and chain; and the beat of the engines,
already gathering speed, was driving her straight toward that dock in
Harlem whither he, within a very short time, would be driving down to
meet her.
"Going? Of course we are," said Varney.
He leaned against the rail and, looking at Mary, almost laughed at the
thought of how easy and simple it was.
"The point of being on a yacht, Miss Carstairs, is to see her go.
Otherwise, one might as well sit in the den at home and look at pictures
of them in the encyclopedia."
"But I--didn't expect to go," she said, gazing at him doubtfully--"only
to look around a little. I'm really afraid I haven't time for a sail."
"Well, you know," he said cheerfully, "as far as looking around is
concerned, going doesn't necessarily take any longer than staying. In
one case, you stay and look around: in the other you go and look around.
That is really all the difference, isn't it?"
"Well, then, it must be a little go and a short look around. Where does
one begin, in looking around a yacht?"
It would have been plain to a far duller plotter that they should be
fully clear of Hunston before he explained the situation to her more
definitely.
"Suppose," said Varney, "we begin with a few general remarks of a
descriptive nature. This vessel, Miss Carstairs, is what is known as a
schooner-rigged steam-yacht. She stands a good bit under a hundred tons.
She is ninety feet long, eighteen feet in the beam and she draws ten
feet--"
"I don't understand a word of that except ninety feet long, but it all
has a perfectly splendid sound! But where can Mr. Hare be? Please send
for him like a good host, and begin back at the beginning again. He just
told me that yachts interested him intensely."
"But, unfortunately, Mr. Hare is no longer with us."
"Not with us? Why--did he _get off_?"
"He certainly did. He and Maginnis are a great pair, aren't they? Not a
minute to give to pleasure or anything of that sort. I believe they
slipped off to Hare's house for another of their eternal private talks."
"But--" Mary stared astoundedly. "He _said_ he was going around with us!
I asked him and he accepted. And besides," she went on, rolling up the
count against the unhappy candidate, "he's got my parasol!"
"We detached that from him before he left. It's around on the other
side. I'll send for it at once."
But her puzzled frown lingered. "I have known Mr. Hare well for six
years," she said, "and this is the first time I ever knew him to do such
an uncivil thing."
"It wasn't his fault, depend upon it. Maginnis called him back, you
know, and no doubt hauled him off bodily, positively refusing to let him
pause for good-byes. A man of ruthless determination, is Maginnis."
She glanced up the deck with vague uneasiness, disquieted by the
unexpected situation. Forty feet away sat the sailing-master's wife
still placidly knitting at her pale blue shawl, the perfect portrait of
secure propriety. The sight of her there was somehow reassuring.
"So is Mr. Hare, I always believed. But never mind. How fast we are
going already!"
"Yes, the _C_--this yacht goes fast."
"What is considered fast for a yacht? How long would it take us to get
to New York?"
"Three hours. Why not go?"
A white-clad steward noiselessly approached with her parasol. She took
it and smiled at Varney's idle pleasantry.
"Thank you, I have too many responsibilities this afternoon. First of
all, we--have a guest at home. Then I simply must go to Mrs. Thurston's
to see about some sewing at five. Last obstacle of all--my mamma! What
would she think had happened?"
"Don't you suppose that she would guess?"
"Do you think I'm the daughter of a clairvoyant, Mr. Varney? No, she
would not guess. She would simply stand at the front window in a Sister
Ann position all the afternoon, crying her pretty, eyes red. But--this
is a schooner-something steam-yacht, ninety feet long, I believe you
said. What comes after that?"
They had left the town dock behind and were scudding swiftly. There was
no longer any reason, even any pretext, for waiting. Every pulse of the
_Cypriani's_ machinery was beating into his brain: "Tell her now! Tell
her now!"
But all at once he found it very hard to speak.
"There is time enough for that. There is something that I must tell you
first--in fairness to Hare. The fact is that I--I made Peter take him
away because I wanted to be alone with you."
The crude speech plainly embarrassed her; she became suddenly engrossed
in examining the carved handle of her parasol, as though never in her
life had she seen it before.
Varney turned abruptly from her and looked out at the flying shore.
"Last night," said he, "you may remember that you asked me a question.
You asked me why I objected to accepting help from you."
"Yes, but that was last night," she interrupted, her instinct instantly
warning her away from the topic--"and you didn't tell me, you know!
Really--we must turn around in two minutes, and so I haven't time to
talk about a thing but yachts."
"I fear that you must find time."
"Must, Mr. Varney?"
"Must. This is a matter in which you are directly concerned."
She faced him in frank wonderment. "Why, what on earth can you mean?"
"Now you must! Now you must!" sang the _Cypriani's_ staunch little
engines.
But he made the mistake of looking at her, and this move betrayed him.
There was no doubt of him in her upturned, perplexed face, no shadow of
distrust to give him strength. His earlier dread of this moment,
strangely faded for a while, closed in on him once more with deadly
force.
"Don't you see that I am trying to tell you and that I am finding
it--hard?" he said quietly.
There was a moment's silence; then she said hurriedly: "Of course I am
all in the dark as to what you--are talking about--but tell me another
time, won't you? Not now, please. And oh--meantime," she sped on, with
the air of hailing a new topic with acclaim, "I have something to tell
you, Mr. Varney!--mystery seems to be in the air to-day. You _must_
hear the strange thing that happened to me this morning. I haven't had a
chance to tell you before."
"Ah, yes! That mysterious warning."
He clutched at the respite like a drowning man at straws, though no
drowning man would have felt his sudden rush of self-contempt.
"Who gave it to you, and what was it about?"
Free of his hidden restraints, she had quite thrown off the
embarrassment which she had felt settling down upon her a moment
before, and laughed lightly and naturally.
"It was about coming to this beautiful luncheon to-day--about _not_
coming, I mean--and it was given to me--don't be angry--by Mr.
Higginson, the old man, you know, who helped you last night."
"Ah!... Mr. Higginson."
"Tell me!" she said impulsively, her eyes upon his face--"I saw last
night that you distrusted him--_do_ you know anything about him?"
With an obvious effort he wrenched his thought from his present urgency,
and brought it to focus upon a puzzle which now seemed oddly like an
echo from a distant past.
"Not yet," he said, with an impassive face. "But I trust--"
"Oh, I don't like the way you say that! I don't see how you _can_ be so
suspicious of such a patently well-meaning old dear. And yet--"
"Well, then, tell me what he said to you and convert me."
"I suppose I must--I have had it on my mind a little, and you have a
right to know. Yet I don't want to at all! For I must say it seems just
a little to--to support your view. Well, then," she said, some
perplexity showing beneath her smile, "it happened about eleven o'clock
this morning as I was going down the street to see Elsie Marne--never
dreaming of mysteries. I met Mr. Higginson walking towards our house,
and we stopped, so I thought, for a friendly word. For he and I made
friends last night. Oh, you have a right to think I am too free, too
easy, in the way I--I make friends with strangers, and yet really
this--is not like me at all. And there is something very winning about
this old man. Well, he asked me point-blank--begged me--not to come to
your lunch-party to-day. What have you to say to that?"
He continued to look at her as from a distance, not answering her little
laugh. Behind the grave mask of his face he cursed himself heartily for
his self-absorption of the morning, which had led him entirely to lose
sight of Mr. Higginson's activities last night. He had fully meant to
search out that "winning" old man on his excursion to the town, but in
his engrossment over the more important duty of the day, the matter had
dropped completely from his mind. That the old spy had somehow ferreted
out their secret was now too plain to admit a doubt. But what
conceivable use did he mean to make of it? To interfere with the
_Cypriani's_ homegoing was beyond his power now. Did it better suit his
mysterious purpose to hold back until the thing was done, in order to
raise the dogs of scandal afterwards?...
For the moment his mind attacked the problem with curiously little
spirit; but one thing at least was instantly clear. He must return to
Hunston to-night, by the first train after his arrival in New York, find
Higginson and call him to his well-earned reckoning. Meantime ... here
was this girl, this daughter of Uncle Elbert, whom the old sneak had for
the second time failed to bend to his mean uses....
"But what reason," he said mechanically, "did he give for his rather
unusual request?"
"He wouldn't give any! That's what makes it all so ridiculous--don't you
see? Naturally I asked, but he only said in his nervous apologetic way
that he wasn't at liberty to tell, but that after last night I ought to
consider whether you--your surroundings were likely to be quite safe. I
said: 'But oughtn't you to give me some idea and, if there is any
danger, warn Mr. Varney and Mr. Maginnis? You can't mean that there is
another plot, involving the yacht this time--the likelihood of a naval
battle on the Hudson?' And then he wrung his hands and said that he
couldn't tell me what he meant, but that I'd certainly regret it if I
came. There! Oh, I _know_ he thought he was doing somebody a
kindness--you and me both, I believe! And yet--that was just a little
creepy, wasn't it?"
He made no answer to this; hardly heard what she said. Mr. Higginson,
his works and ways, had once more slipped wholly from his mind.
Something in the look of her face, its young trustfulness, its utter
lack of suspicion, had already laid paralyzing hold upon him. Now a new
thought possessed him; and all at once his breast was in a tumult.
"And yet," he said, with sudden fierce exultation, "_you came_!"
She colored slightly under his look and tone and, to cover it, gave a
light laugh.
"Oh, yes.. dauntless person that I am! Have you the remotest idea what
he was talking about?... But oh, really we must turn around now! Indeed
we must--I hadn't noticed how far we have come. And you can show me
things as we go back, can't you?"
He started at her speech; asked himself suddenly and wildly what was
wrong with him. A better opening for his crushing announcement could not
have been desired. Yet he stood dumb as a man of stone. One blurted
phrase would commit him irrevocably, but his lips would not say it. And
he was glad.
He stared over the water thinking desperately what this might mean.
In that first meeting, radiant as it had somehow seemed to him, he knew
that, given this chance, he could have carried his business through
without a quiver. Even last night when, he thought, things to make it
harder had piled one on another like Ossa on Pelion, it would not have
been impossible. Now his lips appeared sealed by a new and overwhelming
reluctance; a resistless weakness saturated him through and through,
seducing his will, filching away his very voice.
The _Cypriani_ rattled and wheezed, and her speed sharply slackened, but
he did not notice it. His mind fastened on the stark fact of his
impotence like a key in a lock: his heart leapt up to meet it. He turned
slowly and looked at her.
She leaned lightly upon the rail, her eyes on the water, her lashes on
her cheek like a silken veil. At her breast nodded his favor, the
_Cypriani's_ perfect rose. In her youth, her beauty, and, most of all,
her innocent helplessness, there was something indescribably wistful,
indescribably compelling: it sprang at him and possessed him. Even in
permitting him her acquaintance, she had trusted him far past what he
had any right to expect; and now, with his own sickening game at the
touch, she gave this crowning proof of confidence in him--dashing it
full in the face of the whispering and hinting Higginson, full in his
own face too. Could anything in all the world matter beside the fact
that this girl believed in him, that she had trusted him not only
against convention, not only against his cowardly enemy, but last and
biggest, _against himself?_
And she should not be disappointed. His pledge to her father was a
Jephthah's oath, honorable only in the breaking. His mission, all his
hours in Hunston, took changed shape before the eye of his whirling
mind, monstrous, accusing, unbelievably base. Reward that trust with
treachery, that faith with betrayal? Never while he lived.
Out of his turmoil came peace and light, flooding the far reaches of his
soul.
In crises thought moves with the speed of light. The young man's mental
revolution was over and done with in a second's time; the pause was
infinitesimal. Almost as she finished her last remark, Mr. Carstairs's
daughter turned from the rail and took a step forward upon the deck, as
though to jog her host toward that promised tour of the yacht which had
now flagged so long.
"I thought you ought to know this," she was saying, apparently quite
unaware of his descent into the psychological deeps, "though perhaps you
will think it not worth repeating. But before we go on, do tell me
--won't you?--is Mr. Higginson merely--_seeing things_--a sort of
he-Cassandra, you know--or really do you think there is any danger?"
"No!" answered Varney, so promptly as to give the air of having waited
long for just that question. "There is no danger now, thank God!"
A heavy step sounded near, approaching. Starting to speak, he broke off,
turned and saw the sailing-master coming towards him. Over the
intervening stretch of deck the two men looked at each other, the master
nervously, Varney victoriously.
It was one of those critical moments whose importance no one can gauge
until after the time for guaging is past. However, as it fell out, it
was the master who spoke first.
"Very sorry, sir, indeed," he began, with a curiously uneasy and
hang-dog expression. "The gear's broke down again--in another place.
Couldn't possibly have been foreseen, sir. We can--hem--manage to beat
about without any trouble, but I fear it would not be safe to try to
push on to New York."
"To New York!" said Mary Carstairs, looking at Varney and laughing at
the man's stupidity. "It certainly would not be safe at all!"
Even the furtive-glancing sailing-master was conscious of the tide of
gladness that had broken into his young master's eyes.
"_Put about this instant, man_!" he cried imperiously. "Miss Carstairs
wishes to return to Hunston as soon as possible."
"Right, sir," stammered the astonished Ferguson, backing away. "At once,
sir."
Varney met the man's amazement steadily, laughed into it, and so turned
again to his old friend's daughter. She was conscious of thinking that
this was the first _happy_ smile she had seen on his face since the
night when he lit the lamp at Mr. Stanhope's.
"He seemed nearly stupefied because you weren't going to scold him, did
you notice? I wonder if you are usually very cross with him. But on with
our sightseeing! What is the name of this such-and-such a kind of
steam-yacht?"
"Miss Carstairs," said Varney, struggling against his sudden exaltation
for calmness and self-control--"we are both conscious that I owe you an
explanation for--for what of course you must think my very extraordinary
behavior. Believe me, you shall have it very soon. There is nothing in
the wide world--ah--that is, I'd like very much to give it to you now.
But--no, no--it wouldn't be quite right--no--not fair--"
"You think I am eaten up with feminine curiosity about Mr. Higginson!"
she said, a little hastily. "Oh, I'll show you. Look! Look! We're
turning around already."
"Don't look there. Look in this general direction now and then, and tell
me what you see."
"I see," she said, looking anywhere but at him, "the strangest, the
most _volatile_ and--_not_ excepting Mr. Higginson--the most
_mysterious_ man in Hollaston County!"
"Where are your eyes, Miss Carstairs? You are standing within two feet
of the happiest man in America, and you don't even know it."