Part 2 (2/2)
Miss Lavinia elevated her venerable eyebrows in amazement.
”You have done nothing but tear your dresses, my dear, since you have been in Mr. Turlington's yacht. Most extraordinary! I have torn none of mine during the whole cruise.”
Natalie's dark color deepened a shade. She laughed, a little uneasily.
”I am so awkward on board s.h.i.+p,” she replied, and turned away and shut herself up in her cabin.
Richard Turlington produced his case of cigars.
”Now is the time,” he said to Sir Joseph, ”for the best cigar of the day--the cigar after breakfast. Come on deck.”
”You will join us, Launce?” said Sir Joseph.
”Give me half an hour first over my books,” Launce replied. ”I mustn't let my medical knowledge get musty at sea, and I might not feel inclined to study later in the day.”
”Quite right, my dear boy, quite right.”
Sir Joseph patted his nephew approvingly on the shoulder. Launce turned away on _his_ side, and shut himself up in his cabin.
The other three ascended together to the deck.
SECOND SCENE.
The Store-Room.
Persons possessed of sluggish livers and tender hearts find two serious drawbacks to the enjoyment of a cruise at sea. It is exceedingly difficult to get enough walking exercise; and it is next to impossible (where secrecy is an object) to make love without being found out.
Reverting for the moment to the latter difficulty only, life within the narrow and populous limits of a vessel may be defined as essentially life in public. From morning to night you are in your neighbor's way, or your neighbor is in your way. As a necessary result of these conditions, the rarest of existing men may be defined as the man who is capable of stealing a kiss at sea without discovery. An inbred capacity for stratagem of the finest sort; inexhaustible inventive resources; patience which can flourish under superhuman trials; presence of mind which can keep its balance victoriously under every possible stress of emergency--these are some of the qualifications which must accompany Love on a cruise, when Love embarks in the character of a contraband commodity not duly entered on the papers of the s.h.i.+p.
Having established a Code of Signals which enabled them to communicate privately, while the eyes and ears of others were wide open on every side of them, Natalie and Launce were next confronted by the more serious difficulty of finding a means of meeting together at stolen interviews on board the yacht. Possessing none of those precious moral qualifications already enumerated as the qualifications of an accomplished lover at sea, Launce had proved unequal to grapple with the obstacles in his way. Left to her own inventive resources, Natalie had first suggested the young surgeon's medical studies as Launce's unanswerable excuse for shutting himself up at intervals in the lower regions, and had then hit on the happy idea of tearing her tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and condemning herself to repair her own carelessness, as the all-sufficient reason for similar acts of self-seclusion on her side.
In this way the lovers contrived, while the innocent ruling authorities were on deck, to meet privately below them, on the neutral ground of the main cabin; and there, by previous arrangement at the breakfast-table, they were about to meet privately now.
Natalie's door was, as usual on these occasions, the first that opened; for this sound reason, that Natalie's quickness was the quickness to be depended on in case of accident.
She looked up at the sky-light. There were the legs of the two gentlemen and the skirts of her aunt visible (and stationary) on the lee side of the deck. She advanced a few steps and listened. There was a pause in the murmur of the voices above. She looked up again. One pair of legs (not her father's) had disappeared. Without an instant's hesitation, Natalie darted back to her own door, just in time to escape Richard Turlington descending the cabin stairs. All he did was to go to one of the drawers under the main-cabin book-case and to take out a map, ascending again immediately to the deck. Natalie's guilty conscience rushed instantly, nevertheless, to the conclusion that Richard suspected her. When she showed herself for the second time, instead of venturing into the cabin, she called across it in a whisper,
”Launce!”
Launce appeared at his door. He was peremptorily checked before he could cross the threshold.
”Don't stir a step! Richard has been down in the cabin! Richard suspects us!”
”Nonsense! Come out.”
”Nothing will induce me, unless you can find some other place than the cabin.”
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