Chapter V

Thus the bright days passed, amid animating scenes, with memories of sky and cloud and noble headlands and stately, beautiful ships. Like two ocean sweethearts the Minnehaha and the Paquita took their restless way together, side by side in port, inseparable at sea. At night the one lit the other's road with a string of ruby lanterns and kept the pair in company across the dark and silent water. Their respective crews, not behindhand in this splendid camaraderie of ships, fraternised in wine-shops and strolled through the crooked foreign streets arm in arm. Breton and American, red cap and blue, sixty of the one and eighty of the other--they were brothers all and cemented their friendship in blood and gunpowder, in tattooed names, flags and mottoes, after the time-honoured and artless manner of the sea.

In the drama of life it is often the least important actors who are happiest, and the stars themselves are not always to be the most envied. Florence, torn between her ambition and her love, knew what it was to toss all night on her sleepless bed and wet the pillow with her tears. De Souvary, who found himself every day deeper in the toils of his ravishing American, chafed and struggled with unavailing pangs; and as for Frank Rignold, he endured long periods of black depression as he watched from afar the steady progress of his rival's suit; and his moody face grew moodier and exasperation rose within him to the rebellion point.

By September the two yachts were lying in Cowes, and already there was some talk of winter plans and a possible voyage to India. The count was enthusiastic about the project, as he was about anything that could keep him and Florence together, and he had ordered a stack of books and spent hours at a time with the mistress of the Minnehaha reading over Indian Ocean directories and plotting imaginary courses on the chart.

With the prospect of so extended a trip before him, Frank found much to be done in the engine-room, for their suggested cruise would be likely to carry them far out of the beaten track, and he had to be prepared for all contingencies. A marine engine requires to be perpetually tinkered, and an engineer's duty is not only to run it, but to make good the little defects and breakdowns that are constantly occurring. Frank was a daily visitor at the local machine-shop, and his business engagements with Mr. Derwent, the proprietor, led insensibly to others of the social kind.

Derwent's house was close by his works, and Frank's trips ashore soon began to take in both. Derwent had a daughter, a black- haired, black-eyed, pink-cheeked girl, named Cassie, one of those vigorous young English beauties that men would call stunning and women bold. She did not wait for any preliminaries, but straightway fell in love with the handsome American engineer that her father brought home. She made her regard so plain that Frank was embarrassed, and was not a bit put off at his reluctance to play the part she assigned to him.

"That's always my luck," she remarked with disarming candour, "a poor silly fool who always likes them that don't like me and spurns them that do!" And then she added, with a laugh, that he ought to be tied up, "for you are a cruel handsome man, Frank, and my heart goes pitapat at the very sight of you!"

She called him Frank at the second visit; and at the third seated herself on the arm of his chair and took his hand and held it.

"Can't you ever forget that girl in Yankee-land?" she said. "She ain't here, is she, and why shouldn't you steal a little harmless fun? There's men who'd give their little finger to win a kiss from me--and you sit there so glum and solemn, who could have a bushel for the asking!"

For all Frank's devotion to Florence he could not but be flattered at being wooed in this headlong fashion. He was only a man after all, and she was the prettiest girl in port. He did not resist when she suddenly put her arms around him and pressed his head against her bosom, calling him her boy and her darling; but remained passive in her embrace, pleased and yet ashamed, and touched to the quick with self-contempt.

"You mustn't," he said, freeing himself. "Cassie, it's wrong--it's dreadful. You mustn't think I love you, because I don't."

"Yes, but I am going to make you," she said with splendid effrontery, looking at herself in the glass and patting her rumpled hair. "See what you have done to me, you bad boy!"

Had she been older or more sophisticated, Frank would have been shocked at this reversal of the sexes. But in her self-avowed and unashamed love for him she was more like a child than a woman; and her good-humour and laughter besides seemed somehow to belittle her words and redeem the affair from any seriousness. Frank tried to stay away, for his conscience pricked him and he did not care to drift into such an unusual and ambiguous relation with Derwent's handsome daughter. But Cassie was always on the watch for him and he could not escape from the machine-works without falling into one of her ambushes. She would carry him off to tea, and he never left without finding himself pledged to return in the evening. In his loneliness, hopelessness, and desolation he found it dangerously sweet to be thus petted and sought after. Cassie made no demands of him and acquiesced with apparent cheerfulness in the implication that he loved another woman. She humbly accepted the little that was left over, and, though she wept many hot tears in secret, outwardly at least she never rebelled or reproached him. She knew that to do either would be to lose him. In fact she made it very easy for him to come, and gave up her girlish treasure of affection without any hope of reward. Frank, by degrees, discovered a wonderful comfort in being with her. It was balm to his wounds and bruises; and, like someone who had long been out in the cold, he warmed himself, so to speak, before that bright fire, and found himself growing drowsy and contented.

It must not be supposed that all this went on unremarked, or that in the gossip of the yacht Frank and Cassie Derwent did not come in for a considerable share of attention. It passed from the officers' mess to the saloon, and Florence bit her lip with anger and jealousy when the joke went round of the chief engineer's "infatuation." In revenge she treated Frank more coldly than ever, and went out of her way to be agreeable to de Souvary, especially when the former was at hand and could be made a spectator of her lover-like glances and a warmth that seemed to transcend the limits of ordinary friendship. She made herself utterly unhappy and Frank as well. The only one of the trio to be pleased was the count.

She made no objection when Frank asked her permission to show the ship to Derwent and his daughter.

"You must be sure and introduce me," she said, with a sparkle of her eyes that Frank was too unpresumptuous to understand. "They say that she is a raving little beauty and that you are the happy man!"

Frank hurriedly disclaimed the honour.

"Oh, no!" he said. "But she is really very sweet and nice, and I think we owe a little attention to her father."

"Oh, her FATHER!" said Florence, sarcastically emphasising the word.

"I hope you don't think there is anything in it," he exclaimed very anxiously. "I suppose there has been some tittle-tattle--I can read it in your face--but there's not a word of truth in it, not a word, I assure you."

"I don't care the one way or other, Frank," she said. "You needn't explain so hard. What does it matter to me, anyway?" and with that she turned away to cordially greet the count as he came aboard.

The two women met in the saloon. Florence at once assumed the great lady, the heiress, the condescending patrician; Cassie flushed and trembled; and in a buzz of commonplaces the stewards served tea while the two women covertly took each other's measure. Florence grew ashamed of her own behavior, and, unbending a little, tried to put her guests at ease and led Cassie on to talk. Then it came out about the dance that Derwent and his daughter were to give the following night.

"Frank and me have been arranging the cotillon," said Cassie, and then she turned pink to her ears at having called him by his first name before all those people. "I mean Mr. Rignold," she added, amid everyone's laughter and her own desperate confusion. Florence's laughter rang out as gaily as anyone's, and apparently as unaffectedly, and she rallied Cassie with much good humour on her slip.

"So it's Frank already!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Miss Derwent! don't you trust this wicked chief of mine. He is a regular heart- breaker!"

Cassie cried when Frank and she returned home and sat together on the porch.

"She's a proud, haughty minx," she burst out, "and you love her-- and as for me I might as well drown myself."

Frank attempted to comfort her.

"Oh, you needn't try to blind me," she said bitterly. "I--I thought it was a girl in America, Frank, a girl like me--just common and poor and perhaps not as nice as I am. And you know she wouldn't wipe her feet on you," she went on viciously--"she so grand with her yachts and her counts and 'Oh, I think I'll run over to Injya for the winter, or maybe it's Cairo or the Nile,' says she! What kind of a chance have you got there, Frank, you in your greasy over-alls and working for her wages? Won't you break your heart just like I am breaking mine, I that would sell the clothes off my back for you and follow you all over the world!"

Frank protested that she was mistaken; that it wasn't Miss Fenacre at all; that it was absurd to even think of such a thing.

"Oh, Frank, it's bad enough as it is without your lying to me," she said, quite unconvinced. "You've set your eyes too high, and unhappiness is all that you'll ever get from the likes of her. You're a fool in your way and I'm a fool in mine, and maybe when she's married to the count and done for, you'll mind the little girl that's waiting for you in Cowes!" She took his hand and kissed it, telling him with a sob that she would ever remain single for his sake.

"But I don't want you to, Cassie," he said. "You're talking like a baby. What's the good of waiting when I am never coming back?"

"You say that now," she exclaimed, "but my words will come back to you in Injya when you grow tired of her ladyship's coldness and disdain; and I'm silly enough to think you'll find them a comfort to you out there, with nothing to do but to think and think, and be miserable."