The Simpkins Plot Part 14

"I suppose you're thinking of your own child?"

"Yes, I am. And don't forget that she's not merely my child. She's also your G.o.d-child."

"Well, I gave her a silver mug. Didn't I?"

"You did. A capital mug, large and heavy. She'll be very grateful to you for that mug some day; though, up to the present, all she has done to it is to dint its side one day by dropping it against the corner of the fender when it was given her to play with. You did your duty in the matter of a mug, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that you should give her another. When I reminded you that you are her G.o.d-father, I merely wanted to suggest that you ought to take some little interest in her health and education."

"But I don't know what babies ought to eat."

"What you really mean is that you don't care. You're so wrapped up in this miserable local squabble with Simpkins about a salmon that you've lost all interest in the wider subjects which are occupying the attention of the world."

"Come now, J. J. Your baby--she's a very nice baby and all that. But really--"

"I won't talk about her any more if she bores you. I thought, and hoped, that she might interest you. That's the reason I started her as a topic of conversation. As she doesn't, I'll drop her again, at once.

But what am I to do? I began this evening with a literary allusion, and found that you'd never heard of Longfellow's 'Village Blacksmith.'

That wasn't a very encouraging start, you'll admit. Last night I tried you with art, and all you did was to mix it up with morality, which, as everybody knows, is a perfectly hopeless thing to do. The ancient Hebrews had more sense. They were specialists in morality, and they absolutely forbade art. Whereas the Greeks, who were artists, went in for a thoroughly immoral kind of life. Finding that you were totally indifferent to the metaphysics of the aesthetic, I offered you an interesting chain of abstract reasoning. What was the result? You were absolutely unable to follow me. I then threw out some hints which might have led to an interesting psychological discussion, but you didn't know what I meant. This evening I touched on one of the great principles which must guide us in the consideration of the whole feminist question--"

"That was when you talked about judging Miss King's intentions by the look of her eyes," said the Major.

"Yes; it was. And so far as I can recollect, all you did was to grin in a futile and somewhat vulgar way. Finally, I tried to talk to you about child culture, which is one of the most important problems of our day; a problem which is occupying the attention of statesmen, philanthropists, philosophers, doctors, and teachers of every kind, from kindergarten mistresses to university professors. I began in quite a simple way with a question about the food of an infant. We might, if you had taken the subject up at all warmly, have got on to the endowment of motherhood, nature study, medical examination of schools, the boarding-out of workhouse children, religious education, boy scouts, eugenics, and a lot of other perfectly fascinating topics.

But what do you do? You say frankly and shamelessly that you know nothing at all about the matter."

"But I really do not know how to feed babies. What was the use of pretending that I do?"

"Is there--to get back to the point from which I started--is there any subject that you do know anything about besides politics and polo ponies?"

"I'm afraid not, J. J., except the yacht. I do know something about her."

"Then," said Meldon, "we'll discuss her. I expect we'll come to an end of her soon, but we can at all events decide where we'll go to-morrow."

The yacht turned out to be a more fruitful subject than Meldon expected. The Major had made some alterations in her trim, which led to an animated discussion. He also had a plan for changing her from a cutter into a yawl, and Meldon was quite ready to argue out the points of advantage and disadvantage in each rig. It was half-past eleven o'clock before they parted for the night, and even then they had not decided where to go next day.

CHAPTER IX.

It was the evening of the second day of the _Spindrift's_ cruise. The wind, which had come fresh from the east in the morning, followed the sun round in its course, blowing gently from the south at mid-day, and breathing very faintly from the west in the evening. After sunset it died away completely. The whole surface of the bay lay calm, save here and there where some chance movement of the air ruffled a tiny patch of water; or where, at the corners of the islands and in very narrow channels, the inward drawing of the tide marked long, curved lines and illusive circles on the oily sea. The _Spindrift_ was poised motionless on the surface of the water, borne slowly, almost imperceptibly, forward by the sweep of the tide. Her mainsail, boomed out, hung in loose folds. The sheet, freed from all strain, was borne down by its own weight, until the slack of it dipped in the water.

Terns and gulls, at lazy rest, floated close to the yacht's side. Long rows of dark cormorants, perched on rocky points, strained their necks and peered at her. Innumerable jelly-fish spread and sucked together again their transparent bodies, reaching down and round about them with purple feelers. Now and then some almost imperceptible breath of wind swayed the yacht's boom slowly forward against the loose runner and the stay, lifted the dripping sheet from the water, and half bellied the sail. Then the _Spindrift_ would press forward, her spars creaking slightly, tiny ripples playing round her bows, a double line of oily bubbles in her wake. Again the impulse would fail her, and she would lie still among the palpitating jellyfish, perfectly reflected in the water beneath her; but carried steadily on by the silent sh.o.r.eward swelling of the tide.

Major Kent sat at the tiller smoking. He was in that mood of vacant obliviousness of the ordinary affairs of life which long drifting on calm seas induces. The helplessness of man in a sailing-s.h.i.+p, when the wind fails him, begets a kind of fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable, which is the nearest thing to peace that any of us ever attain. Indeed to drift along the tide is peace, and no conviction of the inevitableness of the worries which lurk in ambush for us on the land has any power to break the spell.

Meldon lay stretched on the deck outside the combing of the c.o.c.kpit.

Nirvana had no attraction for him. He resented forced inactivity as an unendurable wrong. Instead of smoking with half-closed eyes, he peered eagerly forward under the sail. He noted everything--the floating gulls and puffins, the stiff, wild-eyed cormorants, the jelly-fish, the whirling eddies of the tide. As the yacht drifted on, or was driven forward by the occasional faint puffs of air, he hissed through his teeth in the way known to sailors as whistling for a breeze. He gazed long and steadily at the beach beyond the _Spindrift's_ moorings.

"I think," he said at last, "that there is a man on the sh.o.r.e, and he looks to me very much as if he was waiting for us."

Major Kent made no answer. His feeling was that the man who waited might be left to wait without speculation about his purpose. Guessing at the possible business of an unknown and distant man is a form of mental exertion very distasteful to any one who has entered into the calm joy of drifting home after sunset. But Meldon was a man of incurably active mind. He was deeply interested in the solitary figure on the beach. The yacht was borne very slowly on, and it became possible at last to distinguish the figure of the waiter more clearly.

"He looks to me," said Meldon a few minutes later, "very like that fellow Callaghan, the Ballymoy House gardener."

There was another pause. A puff of wind, the last vital rally of the expiring breeze, carried the _Spindrift_ forward till the punt at her moorings lay almost under her bow.

"It is Callaghan," said Meldon, "and there's only one thing which can possibly bring him here at this hour. Something of real importance must have happened between Simpkins and Miss King. I wonder what it is."

"Catch the punt, J. J., and haul her aft till you get a hold of the buoy. If we drift past we'll never get back again. There's barely steerage way on the boat this minute."

Meldon stepped forward. There was a noise of straining ropes and splas.h.i.+ng. Then he stood upright and pulled the buoy on board.

"Unless something exceptionally interesting has occurred," said Meldon, "I can't understand Callaghan waiting for us like this. Perhaps they've got engaged."

"Nonsense," said the Major; "how could they in two days? Let go the peak halyards, and take a pull on the topping lift."

The sail came slowly down. Major Kent and Meldon leaned across the gaff and dragged at the folds of it. Callaghan hailed the yacht from the sh.o.r.e.

"Hold on," said Meldon. "Keep what you've got to say till I come to you. I can't have the details of an interesting love affair shouted across a stretch of water."

The sails were made up and the yacht safely moored. Meldon hustled Major Kent into the punt, and pulled rapidly for the beach. The punt's keel grated on the gravel. Meldon seized the painter in his hand and leaped ash.o.r.e.

"Now," he said to Callaghan, "trot out your news. Have they got engaged?"

"They have not," said Callaghan.

"Then I suppose there must have been what you call impropriety of conduct. If so--"

"There has not," said Callaghan.

"That's just as well; for if there had been, I should have had to ask you to wait before giving me details until the Major had gone a good bit of the way home. He's an unmarried man, and I don't think it would be good for him to--"

"There was no impropriety of conduct that I seen," said Callaghan.

"Well, it can't be helped. I should have been glad, of course, to hear that Simpkins had been pus.h.i.+ng his way on a bit, holding her hand or something of that kind. I suppose, now, if anything of the sort occurred you'd be sure to have seen it."

"Don't I tell you there wasn't," said Callaghan; "nor there couldn't have been, for Simpkins wasn't near the place since the afternoon you was in it yourself."

"What! Do you mean to say--?"

"He was in it the once," said Callaghan, "not long after you leaving, and barring that she gave him a cup of tea there was nothing pa.s.sed between them, and I wouldn't say he was there half an hour."

"Do you hear that, Major? That silly a.s.s Simpkins has actually flung away a priceless opportunity. He hasn't been near her."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Major Kent. "Perhaps now you'll stop your foolish games."

"Could she have gone out to meet him anywhere?" said Meldon to Callaghan.

"She could not. It wouldn't be possible for her to do the like unbeknown to me, for I had my eye on her."

"All day?"